Chapter 3: Breakdown
The next day, I woke up to it being a little rainy. I always worried about the rain now, on account of the time everything almost collapsed, but since then Felix has reassured me that it's fine and he'd let me know when things were out of the ordinary. I got ready for the day, and brought my Modifier on my regular walk along with an umbrella. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, the only real change I spotted was a bench that had been facing the wrong way. I got back inside, dried off a bit while enjoying breakfast and rewatching PeanutButterGamer's video on the first Elder Scrolls. I just wanted to take today to be a rest day, as School started next Wednesday, the 5th of August, and I didn't have a ton of Summer left before I had to prepare for college. I was still worried about Francisco and Twitch, for sure, but if I spent every waking hour stressing over it then nothing else would get done. By around 10:00 AM, Alex knocked on my door. “Yeah?” I asked.
“Hey, Ash,” Alex said, opening the door, “Mom just texted me, she's going to be working late tonight. I was thinking I was gonna order some pizzas, if you wanted you could invite your friends over at, like, 5:00, y'know? There's not much of the Summer left for you guys.”
I agreed and texted Franklin, Nathan, and George to see if they could, and got positive responses all across the board. I'll be honest, I was kinda looking forward to tonight, the idea of getting to use today as a sort of last hurrah for our Summer was great, especially with us not being able to see George for most of the school year, and with Nathan and Franklin taking vastly different classes than I was. I figured I'd brush up on animating for most of today. At about noon, I got a phone call from Felix. “Hey, Ash, could you do me a favor and check the weather?”
“Why? It's eh... it's raining. And?”
“Okay, what does the computer say?”
“Huh, sunny.”
“Yeah, it shouldn't be a problem, but I thought I had the weather here synced with our outside world. I guess not. Well, I'll see if I can't sync that back up. Alright, thanks for checking for me.”
“No problem, Felix.”
I hung up and got back to animating. After a few minutes, the rain slowly died down and it was sunny again.
By about 4:30, Alex ordered the pizzas and was heading out to pick them up. As I locked the door behind him, I realized it was raining again. It had stopped for a few hours, sure, but why had it started back up. Weather.com showed that it was supposed to be sunny still, so I quickly called Felix, which went to voicemail. Strange, I had never gotten voicemail on his cellphone. I hung up without a message and dialed the Capitol outright. “This is Felix,” he said from the other side of the line.
“Hey, you didn't pick up your cell phone?”
“Wh... oh, must have left it in the Workshop. You saw it was raining again, too?”
“Yeah, I thought you fixed it.”
“I did, but I guess it rolled back. It's odd, I got into the system just fine, but right after I synced up the weather here to what the computer says is happening around here, I got locked out. I guess I'll go back in and--”
“You don't think Francisco is handling this?”
“Personally, I doubt it. The object that handles weather is invisible and requires knowing exactly where in the sky it is. You found one of those bits by accident, but finding the right one would take a lot more work, and besides, I locked those all. I should be the only one to get onto them, they're locked with a different password than my computer account.”
Alright, if you're sure that it isn't you, then--”
Just then, I got a notification from Nathan that they were on their way, with an image of him and Franklin attached with a copy of Cards Against Humanity. Damn it, I had that game, but whatever, I have other games we could play, too. I went back to talking with Felix. “--sorry, I got a text. Anyways, if it isn't you and it shouldn't be anyone else, then maybe it's just not working right. I'm not sure if replacing programs is a thing, but if it is then you should probably do it, then.”
“Well, alright,” Felix replied with a chuckle, “I'll let you get back to it. Take care, Ash.”
As I hung up, there was a knock at the door. George was standing there, with a copy of Pokkén Tournament in one hand and an umbrella in another. “Hey, Ash! Look what I bought!”
“They made a Pokémon fighting game?”
“Yeah, it just came out a few days ago!”
“Alright, go set that on the coffee table, Franklin and Nathan should be here soon and Alex is on his way getting pizza.”
Alex texted me just a moment later saying “Pizza place is giving me shit, order never went through, will have to go somewhere else, might be a few minutes late.”
“Alright, that sucks but at least we have options.”
George had booted up Pokkén and I played a couple rounds against him while we waited for Nathan, Franklin, and Alex. He was pretty good at the game, whereas I hadn't legitimately played a Tekken game in years, so it was pretty one-sided. After about ten minutes, Alex showed up with a few pizzas from some placed called“Vinny's Pizza and Pasta”, and set them on the kitchen table with some paper plates. “George, want a soda?”
“Um, do you have juice?”
“Yeah, we have some orange juice.”
“I'll take that, please.”
“No problem. Mountain Dew, Ash?”
“Sure.”
“Alright. Hey, where's Frank and Nate?”
“Um, not sure. Should I go wait up front and keep an eye on them?”
“That'd be great if you did.”
I sat by the front window and sent them a text. “Hey, how far away are you guys?”
After a minute, I got a response from Nathan. “Just a couple minutes, Franklin needed to pick up some business cards from the print shop.”
“Alright.”
After a minute, the rain outside suddenly became a storm, but I saw the headlights to Franklin's car round the corner and head out way. As they rounded the second corner to get in front of the house, the car slid across the street and into a tree. I gasped, put on my shoes, and ran outside. “Everyone alright?” I asked, running up to the car.
The driver side door had been completely smashed by the tree, and from the broken window I could see the airbag had gone off. Two seatbelts unbuckled, and Nathan began pulling Franklin from the car. He was completely out. Alex rushed outside and started calling for help. “Nathan, is he alright?”
“He's breathing at least, but this isn't good. Where's George, is he alright?”
“Yeah, he's still inside.”
“Alright. Franklin's family should have money to replace the car but I'm most worried about him. Should we move him into the garage?”
“No, wouldn't moving him potentially cause more injury? Let me go grab an umbrella, we can keep him dry that way.”
“Good idea!”
“Alright, I called an ambulance,” Alex said, “they'll be here in just a minute.”
I rushed inside to grab both mine and George's umbrellas. “George, where'd you put your umbrella?”
“It should be in the corner. Why?”
“Franklin's hurt and unconscious, we're keeping him covered until an ambulance picks him up.”
“What?!” he exclaimed.
“Don't panic, little buddy, we got this, he should be fine.”
I hurried outside, handing my umbrella to Nathan and opening George's. “Are you hurt?” I asked him.
“Just a bit, but with how that tree hit the driver side, I'm worried most about Franklin. I can't lose him.”
Felix had pulled up a couple houses down just a bit later, and walked up to us. “Is everyone alright?”
“Franklin's unconscious, we're worried but I'm alright,” Nathan said.
“You want some hot cider?” Felix replied.
“Not right now,” Nathan said.
After another minute, the ambulance pulled up and two guys got out and began moving Franklin. “So what happened?” one of the paramedics asked Nathan.
“Well, we were driving to get to Ash's house, here, and just as the storm kicked up and we rounded this corner, he lost control of the car and it crashed into the tree. I pulled him out of the car, I have no idea how hurt he is, but I'm doing only a little worse for wear.”
“You should still come with us just to be on the safe side.”
Just then, the rain started dying down, and I heard some footsteps. As Nathan and Franklin were brought into the ambulance and it drove away, I began to track down the sound. Someone had run from the shrubs by the corner to the park, and once I heard more shrubbery move and a familiar voice quietly exclaim “Ow, shit!” I rushed in that direction. Francisco was there, with some kind of Modifier in tow, staring at me like a deer in headlights. Before I knew what to do, he jumped out of the shrubs, pointed the Modifier into the sky, clicked something, and before I could take him down or scream or even react, he was gone. I was gasping by that point. “Was that...?” I heard Felix say.
“That was Francisco, he was using some kind of Modifier to change the weather to make this happen for some reason. I don't know why, but then he clicked a thing and he was gone and--”
“Calm down, it's alright. Let me just--”
“Felix!”
Felix scanned the object Francisco had clicked and read the name out loud. “Global entity translation position handler. I guess he teleported himself away with that. Now Ash, I know things look a bit rough right now, but everything's going to be alright. Franklin is going to be alright. I can see if they'll let us visit in the morning. Here,” he said, handing me his thermos, “you can return it to me in the morning. We'll go visit them and make sure they're doing alright.”
“But what abou--”
“Francisco? I can keep an eye on things and if I see anything out of the ordinary, I can come back and fix it. Don't stress out about this right now, Ash, okay? We got this. The passwords on these objects aren't any important ones, and even if they know them all I can just reset any things they mess with.”
I could tell he was grasping at straws just like I was about the whole situation, but I could trust him enough about this. “Alright.”
I headed home to Alex drying off and George asking him a lot of questions. “Ash, is Franklin going to live?” George asked.
“Of course,” I replied, “they're bringing him to a hospital and are going to do their best with him. Sorry this is the party we ended up having, bud. You want me to drive you home?”
“I could do it,” Alex said, picking up his keys.
“Alright, thanks,” I said.
I sat in my room with the blinds up and window open, watching the evening sky mellow out and dim, and watching a man tow away what was left of Franklin's car. The sound of the occasional car driving across the wet pavement, the birds just outside the window, and somewhere out there in this borderline picturesque view was a guy who wasn't even 18 running amok. I sincerely hoped Felix was right, that we'd have nothing to worry about.
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