Story Challenge 3: A man beyond time

This Story Challenge was originally posted to Facebook in two parts on July 22nd, 2013. The base concept arose at a party a few weeks earlier, and I'm tremendously pleased with the end result. The five concepts I went with were:

- Weida fighting raccoons to save a hot dog stand
- "And then I realised, ____ burns!"
- The Time Warp
- A winged unicorn fighting a blue moose
- THE BEES

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Weida smiled as the vendor handed him the hot dog. His empty stomach grumbled in anticipation at the sight of it. It had been a very long day, and he hadn't had the chance to eat at all.

In his current state this burnt sausage was practically a luxury.

He licked the saliva and took a deep breath as he raised the hot dog toward his face. He wanted to devour the thing whole, but people were watching, so he thought it best to restrain himself. His hands shook as he struggled to refrain from smashing it into his mouth. The quick pace at which it ascended was far too slow for his liking, and he felt as if an eternity would pass before he'd feel the satisfaction he so desperately sought.

Just as the hot dog was passing his lips, a flash of fur and claws appeared out of nowhere, and suddenly his food was gone. He stood in shock for a moment, unable to understand why he wasn't eating right now. His shock was abruptly broken by the scream of the hot dog vendor as an angry raccoon ripped out his throat.

They were everywhere. Raccoons -- shrouded in rage and splattered with the blood of the plaza's civilians.

Hundreds of hissing beasts began to circle Weida, the last living soul in the area. The shaking of his body intensified as fear was added to hunger. The mixture of sensations was to much for him to handle. He was unable to act, unable to breathe.

Shadows crept into the edges of his vision as the circling beasts drew ever closer. Their leers danced in his fading sight.

And then there was only blackness.

...

Weida let out a groan as consciousness fought for control of his mind. He wasn't exactly sure what had happened, but the faces of hundreds of rabid raccoons was burned into his memory.

Could it have been a dream? Was he dead?

As he opened his eyes, he was met with the gaze of a spectral, blue moose, head tilted at an inquisitive angle.

"Hullo," said the moose.

Yup, thought Weida. Definitely dead.

"How's your head feeling?"

Weida chuckled to himself as he idly rubbed his throbbing temple. "As well as can be expected. I am dead, after all."

The moose met his laugh with one of its own. "You aren't dead, my friend." Its chest puffed up with pride as it continued: "I saved you!"

"Well then. Thanks, I guess." Weida shifted his eyes in discomfort, unsure of how to respond.

He was in a dark, shapeless place. A black void surrounded the pair, illuminated only by the light emanating from the moose's body. The black surface upon which he sat felt like tofu as he slid his hand across it.

"Where am I?"

"That's not really important," replied the moose. "What matters is that you're alive, and so we have a chance."

"A chance at what?"

The moose arched his eyebrow in incredulity. "A chance to win."

Seeing Weida's jaw drop, the moose continued. "Right now, my brother's raccoon army is tearing through the mortal world. For whatever reason, you were at the epicentre of his transdimensional gate, and so you have a unique opportunity to stop him. As you are now, he would crush you without breaking a sweat, but I was able to pull you out before the raccoons could deal their final blow.

"I'm going to train you, make you stronger, so that you can draw on the dimensional energies you've been subjected to and defeat my brother before he destroys your world." The moose reached out and laid a hoof on Weida's shoulder. "You are their only hope."

Weida looked down at the enormous hoof. He felt it. It was real.

With an uncertain swallow he looked back as the moose's face. "So, um... Who are you?"

The moose took it's arm back as it pondered the question. "I'm not entirely sure, to be honest. I've never needed a name before. I have always been, and always will be. How does one label eternity?"

"Right..."

"I'm sorry, I could make a name up if you'd like."

"No, that's okay. It wouldn't make much of a difference..." He sighed as he continued. "And your brother, is he... like you?"

"Yes, and no," came the cryptic reply. "Like me, my brother is eternal. But this form is my own. My brother's shape more closely resembles a pegasus."

"Pegasus?"

"Yes, a pegasus."

Weida's confusion silently prompted an explanation. "It's like a unicorn with wings. In your world they are most prevalent in Greek mythology."

"Why are you so different?"

"We are what we choose to be. I like moose, so I modeled myself after one for the time being. My brother wanted to appear more imposing."

Weida let the silence drag on. The moose waited patiently for him to be ready. He was overwhelmed by what was happening to him. He had never thought of himself as a hero, but this strange being was now telling him that the fate of the whole world rest in his hands. Was he ready for that responsibility?

Ready or not, he thought, I have to do this. There's noone to be brave for me.

Filled with grim resolve, he stood, a new man. Weida raised his clenched fist and looked the moose straight in the eye. "I'm ready. Teach me."

...

Weida shifted his weight as he waited for the moose to begin. They hand been standing like this for several minutes now, with the beast lost in thought and the man waiting patiently for some indication of how to proceed. The silence was becoming increasingly uncomfortable as the seconds passed, but he was too nervous to break it with what was probably a dumb question. He figured that a timeless spirit beast would have his reasons for making him wait.

When the moose opened it's eyes, it seemed shocked to see relief wash over the man before him. After pondering for a moment, its eyes softened empathetically.

"I'm sorry, I forgot how justifiaby impatient mortal creatures can be. I was examining the waves of time to determine how best to proceed."

After a few more moments of awkward silence, Weida cleared his throat. The moose took the queue and continued.

"Well, I've determined that to defeat my brother's army, we must use teh small, rather than the large. I'll teach you how to channel your void energy into many tiny, independent pieces to aid you in your battle. In just a few of your Earth years we should be ready to strike back."

"YEARS!?" The single word was all that he could manage to sneak past the lump in his throat. The matter-of-fact statement hit him with a wall of incredulity.

The moose remained unphased, thouh his head tilted in curiosity. "Of course. While you have a certain advantage, you are still only one man. It will take more than a little doing to get you ready to face my brother and his army. What did you expect?"

Indignant, Weida glared at the moose. "But what about the rest of the world?! What's going to happen to them?"

"Nothing, I expect," shrugged the moose. "They're all dead, after all."

Weida's stomach dropped. "Dead?" He could barely manage to whisper the word. It was as if his whole world had crumbled around him. All of his loved ones, all of his brothers... Nothing would be waiting for him when he returned.

Weida fell to his knees in despair. The sadness of the thought was crushing. Were there walls in this place they would surely be closing around his tortured soul. Deep down, he cursed the moose. He suspected, of course, that his world was in ashes, but somehow not knowing made it easier to deal with.

Ignorance truly was bliss.

The nonchalant voice of the moose brought Weida back to reality. "Sure they are," it said. "My brother is particularly good at this sort of thing. But there's no need to be so dramatic. You're going to stop it, after all."

Weida's eyes shot up to meet those of the moose, a glimmer of hope shining deep in their pupils. "I am?"

The moose sighed. "I suppose I should probably explain a few things before we continue," it said. "First of all, my brother and I are immortal, as I'm sure you have already guessed. Since we've been around for forever, we have some talents that are pretty unique.

"One of my brother's primary talents is control over beings. He's able to enter a non-willful consciousness and replace it with his own. He could theoretically do this thousands, if not millions of times to amass an army, but over time that has proven to be rather ineffective. Instead he takes over a few creatures of a given type that have certain useful characteristics and then he mirrors and merges their existence to create inumerable soldiers with a single mind. It's sort of like breeding, or cloning, but infinitely more complicated and more precise.

"My abilities, on the other hand, revolve more around a deep understanding of time and matter. I am able to read and manipulate waves and energies. It's a much more subtle form of control than that of my brother, but it certainly has its uses.

"Every so often my brother and I engage in what some might call a game, though it's more of a battle of wits. He will cause some form of catastrophe in an arbitrary space, and I must try to stop it from occurring. I usually have to be very careful in how I go about doing this, but by putting you at the epicentre of his event he has made a mistake. If you're willing to learn we should be able to deal with this incident with relative ease."

Weida gave himself a few minutes to consider what he'd heard before picking his jaw up from the floor. He swallowed the lump in his throat before slowly climbing to his feet. "So we can stop this?"

"If you're willing to learn."

Weida clenched his fist and loked the moose dead in the eye.

"Let's do this."

...

Weida smiled as the vendor handed him the hot dog. His empty stomach grumbled in anticipation. He had been waiting for this for a very, very long time.

He sighed quietly as he looked at the sausage. I wish I could eat you, he thought.

He watched the surrounding area carefully with his peripheral vision as he began to raise the hot dog to his mouth. It had only moved a few inches when a flash of movement at the far end of the plaza caught his eye.

They were here.

In a flash, he threw the hot dog into the air in front of him, right in the face of a very surprised raccoon. The beast flew forward, its intended path only slightly upset by the projectile. Weida met it with practiced confidence, catchingit with a sweeping motion and summarily breakng its neck.

One down, he thought.

Screams erupted in the plaza as the horde of raccoons swarmed through the trees. Their attention was focused solely on the man that had slain one of their comrades. Having found the moose's champion, their rampage could wait. Weida smiled as the civilians were all able to flee to safety.

Hundreds, and then thousands of furry faces rushed toward him. A cloud of dust arose as the cobblestone disappeared under a wave of grey and black fur.

In the middle of the chaos, Weida was perfectly calm. He set his emotions aside and sought the energy deep within him, channeling it into his outstretched palm. A blue light began to emanate as the distance between him and the angry horde grew ever smaller.

As the first of the raccoons reached him, he sprang into action. He coiled the muscles in his legs and shot into a backflip as a tiny ball of energy shot frm his palm. The ball morphed into the shape of a bee and intercepted the raccoon with its stinger outstretched. As the collided, the stinger detached and injected into the heart of the beast. The energy immediately began to return to Weida as the raccoon collapsed, and then exploded with a brilliant blue light. The light washed over the other raccoons nearby, and they dissolved into nothingness.

As Weida landed, he broke into a sprint away from the encroaching horde. more energy bees shot from his palm as he ran, and explosions caused the ground to rumble beneath his feet. The raccoons kept coming, and despite his best efforts, they drew ever closer. The enraged hiss of thousands of creatures drowned out the sound of his heart beating in his ears.

As one of the raccoons overtook him, it jumped at him from the right. He dropped his left knee and shot out his right foot, dropping into a spin and bringing his elbow to bear in the raccoon's face. He felt the sickening crush of bone and brain matter as his appendage connected, and the raccoon went flying away from him with a spray of blood. He used the momentum of the spin to leap out of the way of another leaping beast, landing in a roll and coming to his feet in a sprint as he passed the buildings at the edge of the plaza.

The battle raged through the streets of the city. At every turn, more raccoons would be waiting for him. He'd leap off of walls and over parked cars, smacking angry creatures out of the air. He'd slide under signs and bushes, only to kick his pursuers out of the way. Every so often he'd glance behind him to the ever approaching and seemingly endless horde of raccoons. His bees weren't defeating them quickly enough, and the horde was getting ever closer. At this rate they'd be on him, and then all would be lost.

Weida was getting desperate. He looked frantically at the shops as he fought. There were restaurants and corner stores all along the streets, but nothing that would be useful in defeating the horde. He even saw an LCBO, but while he figured he had earned a drink, this wasn't really the time or place for such things.

And then he realised: alcohol burns.

He directed his palm toward the liquor store and dozens of energy bees shot forth. He gave them a mental command to find the strongest alcohol they could as the glass doors shattered.

He darted down a side street, and the shop was out of sight. He had to buy some time. Minutes passed as he ran through the streets, subtlely directing the horde back toward the liquor store while killing as many as possible with his bees and his appendages, dodging the claws and teeth of his pursuers.

As he turned down a major intersection he saw the telltale glow of his bees carrying bottles from the next block. He lowered his head and sprinted as hard as he could as he issued another mental command to his bees. They stopped flying and started to vibrate.

Heat from the accelerating bees began to heat the bottles they were holding. The air shimmered as warmth spread through the street, and some of the bottles began to glow.

As Weida pass the swarm, the first of the bottles shattered. The rain of liquor burst into flame as it fell, showering teh street behind him in a burning rain. The closest raccoons screeched in pain as it poured over them, causing their fur to alight. One by one, the other bottles began to shatter, covering the whole street in a wall of fire.

Weida focused hard on the energy inside of him as he dug in his heels and skidded to a halt, turning to face the horde as he slowed. He grimaced as he pulled his arms to his chest, the strain of the action threatening to burst the blood vessels in his head.

And then, with a mighty push, he shot a wave of energy toward the flames. As passed through the fire, it too ignited, and the squeals of burning raccoons became deafening as it passed through the street. All four lanes and both sidewalks were covered in a rolling wall of flame that shot down forth, consuming all in its path. The remaining raccoons, as eager as they were to catch their prey, had all clustered into the street, and there was nowhere left to run.

Weida's whole body shook as the wall dissipated. The charred corpses of raccoons lay littered in the street, causing a sickening stench to wash over him. The only sounds were the wind and his heavy breathing.

Once he was sure it was done, he collapsed. It had taken everything he had, but the city -- the whole world -- was safe. He'd done it.

The blue moose had won.