Chapter Five

A Smile For The Ages

Falco reclined in a leather chair on the deck of his airship. He doodled idly in one of his notebooks. The weather was nice, not a single cloud on the horizon. He chuckled, every day had nice weather when you lived in a balloon. The wind tickled his handlebar mustache and ran across his chiseled face. His lips curled into a smug smile beneath his mustache, as they so often did.

A lightning strike tore across the sky and ruined the spotless weather. Falco dropped his notebook out over the ship’s railing but caught it again with the tips of his fingers. That had been too close. If he had lost that notebook, he would’ve had to go get it, no two ways about it. And he did not want to land in this place.

He looked out over the teetering towers of scrap and the dilapidated ruins of the Scrapyard. The place was infamous for being the resting place of his old friend and was for the most part shunned by all who knew of it. Falco didn’t need to heed any such caution though, he had an airship.

He opened the notebook and looked at his latest drawing of a keystorm while the memories of a time gone by churned in his mind. Another spark of lightning sundered the ground below him and he looked up just in time to see the dark blue mists of a keystorm spin into existence. He’d never seen one from so up close. The sheer clarity of it took his breath away. It was almost like the drawing in his notebook had jumped out of the page into the real world.

Falco threw the notebook to the deck and held on to the metal helmet on his head as he ran to the helm. He’d really need to sort out a strap of some kind, running with one hand on his head all the time was getting to be ridiculous. He fumbled with the levers in his excitement until he found the correct one. A valve opened at the top of his balloon and the hydrogen inside rushed out with a hissing noise. Slowly the airship and its captain fell towards the Scrapyard.

Falco ran back down and hung out over the railing. The storm was a big one, and a violent one as well. It rushed around itself in a circle, the dark smoke hiding everything inside from view. The clouds billowed counter to the way the wind blew, as if a completely different wind Falco couldn’t see was the one that frothed the tips of the clouds into such a flurry.

The storm rotated on the spot with the patience of a glacier. The resulting mismash of seemingly contradictory forces left a very disconcerting effect on Falco, like he was looking at one of the illusions some of the prospective sponsors had shown him back at the academy to impress him. The speed of the storm’s rotation changed according to what section you focused on, just like how those illusions had worked.

Such things had fascinated him to no end in the past. But now, these storms frustrated him. None of it should have ever happened.

The top of a tree peeked out the top of the storm. More objects started appearing; several statues, a cart, whole walls, some roof tiles and more trees. Most of the smaller items Falco had no names for. At one point he saw a large metal cabinet drop out of nothing. It tipped over and numerous sets of what looked like some sort of armor spilled out. The suits were bulky, rounded and bright white. The helmets had glass visors! Falco shook his head at the thought of someone being dumb enough make armor with glass. These other timelines that were now spilling into the ruins of his once great planet truly made some strange objects.

The airship drifted on the breeze. The center of the storm came into view. He’d never been able to look down into a storm before, the storm clouds always reached unnaturally high into the sky, but for some reason this particular storm was different.

He peered down into the core of the storm and to his surprise found… well… nothing.

He looked straight into a long tunnel stretching all the way from the top of the storm down to the ground. Not a speck of mist or smoke twisted it’s way into this funnel of nothingness. At the bottom he saw the scrapyard, looking as it always had since Crassus broke. It was like looking down the eye of a whirlpool.

A large enclosed metal cart circled around in the wind, sticking out of the funnel every now and then. The cart had four black wheels with silver spokes. It was made completely from metal except for the glass windows on all sides. He’d seen these metal carts lay strewn about before, amidst the rubble the storms left in their wake. Some of the newcomers had told him they were used as carts in their homelands, but Falco couldn’t see the appeal.

This cart had two large lamps at one end that shone through the storm, revealing ghostly shapes in the mass of chaos. At the other end two more lamps shone an ominous deep red in the darkness, but these did not shine as bright.

Just as sudden as it had arrived, the storm along with the funnel disintegrated. That was the best word for it, the storm just smoldered away into nothingness. One second the brooding clouds battered against the land, and the next second the blue sky smiled upon it in apology.

The metal cart hurtled towards the ground. It skidded off a wall with a deafening screech and landed on the ground with a bounce and a thud. A door in the side of the box opened and a small man with blonde, almost golden, hair walked out on shaky legs.

The man seemed alright, Falco been worse for wear before himself and lived to tell the tale. The man vomited onto the ground before him. Yes, definitely alright, well, it was time to be off! No dillydallying about. He’d seen what he’d come for.

A roar sounded in the distance. Falco froze. He knew that sound well. He covered his face with his hands and muttered to himself. “No no no no…” He balled up his fists and beat them against his forehead. “Do not do this, just leave…”

Falco grabbed the railing with both hands, leaned over it and screamed.

“HEY KID!”

The man on the ground whipped around and quickly located Falco standing on his airship hovering above the man.

“Do you speak English?” Falco hollered.

“Uh, yes!” The man answered.

“My name is Falco, what is your name?”

The man hesitated. “I’m Finn, nice to meet you!”

Falco did not hesitate. “What country do you come from?”

“America.”

“From the Union?”

Finn brought a hand up and ruffled his hair. “Uh, no… from the US.” He seemed a bit sheepish. “From the United States.” He added, and he smiled so wide Falco could see it all the way up from his airship.

“What year was it?”

Finn hesitated at this as well, but shorter than last time. “2005.”

Now it was Falco’s turn to hesitate. The timelines people arrived from were growing later and later with every person he met, far outpacing the rate time went by in the Endpoint. Falco had no way to explain why that was so, but his best guess was that the non-union alternate timeline had something to do with it. At the very least this gave him an excuse to save the kid.

"Falco"