☂︎ 𝔱𝔰𝔲 | ❛ ᴏʜ, ʏᴏᴜ ɢᴏᴛᴛᴀ ʙᴇ ꜱʜɪᴛᴛɪɴ ᴍᴇ ❜

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𝐀 𝐃𝐈𝐙𝐙𝐘𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐀𝐘 of flashlight beams bounce all around the walls and floors of the academy. When they reach the first floor they hear a loud crash that sends the trio of siblings a sharp and painful spike of adrenaline all throughout their veins. Their flashlights snap simultaneously to the source of the noise and they visibly relax. Standing under the three weak beams of light is their brother Luther who stands on the second floor near the stairs clutching the railing with one gloved hand and rubbing his sore knee with the other with a wince.

He sighs, looking down upon them where only a few worthy moonbeams leaking through the mosaics and spill onto their figures revealing to him their identity. "You guys alright?"

"We're fine," Diego says shortly, beginning to scan the room around them. He seems to forget his anger for his brother in the next instant when a flash of fear flies across his face. "Hey, is Mom up there with you?"

Luther nods, his eyes flickering across the way to where she sat on her couch before her paintings. She seemed to be none the wiser to what was going on around her and his heart sank a little. He looks back down at Diego.

"Yeah, she's here. She's fine." Diego visibly relaxed far more than he had since the power gave out. He begins making his way to the steps to join them. "What about the others? They with you?"

"Apparently Vanya left about a half an hour ago," Allison says, a bit of an edge to her voice as she thrusts the fourth flashlight into Luther's hand. "And Five just took the car. Missed out on all the fun,"

"Yeah, he's good at that," Klaus mumbles, raking a hand down his tired face.

"No word on Pogo?"

"He's the one that told me Vanya left," Klaus said. "Then he hobbled off to wherever... you know, wherever advanced hybrid doctor monkeys hobble off to. Didn't seem in a very talkative mood, if you ask me. Think he might still be taking Dad's death pretty hard."

"Well, we'll find him," Luther reassured the group, instinctively falling back into leadership mode. The flashlight Allison had given him came on with a sharp click. "And we're gonna get to bottom of this."

"Enthralling speech there, Bigfoot," Diego says, drawing a flat and angered look on his brother's face as he begins scoping out the area. "Do you actually have any theories, or is there something in that abnormally small head of yours that needs to spit out cliché pep talks,"

"Diego, this is hardly the time," Luther seethes through gritted teeth.

Diego stares at his brother with a flicker of grim amusement from over his shoulder. That's when it hits again; another deep rumble grows from down below like a growl growing in the back of the throat. The group inches together back to back as they prepare to take on whatever may hit them.

But nothing in their entire lives - not even a life such as theirs with which was built around preparedness could have possibly have equipped them for what happened next.

It started with the subtle flickering of lights all around them - quite literally, every light within their vicinity aside from their flashlights flickered at unnatural speeds before they were suddenly bathed in blinding light. The electricity had seemingly been dialed up to twenty on a scale that wasn't supposed to exist. An obnoxious buzz accompanied, assuring them that the electricity was off the fritz and with every passing second it grew brighter and brighter until it had consumed them completely. And as it did, the rumbling and shaking got louder and angrier until a resounding pop of several light bulbs bursting making everyone jump.

The lights went out for a second time but the thunder never stopped. A sudden and fleeting tremor unlike any other rocked the house only a split second after a bone-chilling crack of what one could only describe sounding like a small explosion from stories below their feet. And yet none of this is what horrified them.

None of them had enough sense to piece together what the hell was happening in this dammed place their entire lives, so they certainly had no sense to understand the sudden pull in their gut and the absence of matter beneath their feet, and a total lack of balance. In the darkness it took them moments, but they finally noticed what so wrong.

The four siblings - along with everything else in the entire mansion that wasn't bolted to the walls or floors - were completely suspended in midair. Luther recognized the feeling all too well during his time in space and he was the first one out of four to draw the correct conclusion; something was hindering the earth's gravity.

"What the shit!?" Diego exclaimed. In his seemingly simple quest to find the ground he had unknowingly propelled himself forward into a slow spin he now couldn't stop.

"Oh, my god! Oh, my god! Oh, my god! Oh, my god! Oh, my god!" Cried Klaus, desperate to grab onto anything to steady himself. Even if that meant clumsily swimming through the air to cling to Luther.

"Alright, alright, uhm, okay," Luther looked around wildly, trying hard not to drown in the sudden panic. He had to bat away at Klaus's hands to keep him from throwing him off-center like Diego as he desperately tried to think. "Okay, everybody just- just to stay calm."

"Stay calm?!" Allison gaped from beside him. She stopped to flick away stray debris from a busted bulb as carefully as she could without cutting herself. "How the hell can we stay calm!? How is this even possible?"

He shook his head, unable to wipe the fearful expression twisting up his face. He spotted the flashlight in dancing in the air and made a grab for it. Luther used it to look all around the room, all the while shaking his head as sweat collected on his brow and threaten to depart into the air.

"I-i don't know,"

"What do we do?!" Diego shouts. By now he had rotated far enough forward he could reach the floor with his hands which he eagerly used to stop his spinning. Blood rushed to his face, doing nothing to stop the veins popping up on his forehead as he craned his head up to look at Luther.

"I said I don't know!" Luther snapped. It came out in a shout but the crack in his voice gave away the overwhelming fear behind it. He licked his chapped lips, scanning the room for nothing in particular as his mind scrambled for a plan.

In their suffocating panic - and the fact that none of them could see from where they were stuck at the moment - they all failed to notice their mother on the second floor. She had absentmindedly been attending to the dusting, humming a merry tune as she did so when it happened and she slowly departed from the ground. She never got farther than a few inches when she reached for an unnoticeable spot behind her ear. The mechanism behind her skin had begun to glow a dull violet in the shape of small button and a magnetic buzz pulled her feet back to the ground. With the sound bot u like a retractable knife unsheathing, the pointed heels of her shoes extending in one swift movement that kept her locked into the ground.

But she was none the wiser. Grace continued to hum her merry tune and attend to her dusting. One of her paintings was looking rather neglected but it was a quick fix. The feather duster danced long the frame sending plumes of dust twirling and dancing in the air like magic with no intention of reaching the ground.

It all ended as quickly as it started, and everything came crashing down hard to the ground. The four siblings landed in a messy pile, none of them landing as roughly as Diego who had been unfortunate enough to meet the ground head first. They all groaned as they pulled themselves together; Diego rubbing his head and Klaus who was clutching his stomach.

"I feel so nauseous," he whined.

"If that happens again, and you throw up... I swear to god, I'm gonna give you a zero-gravity wedgie." Diego hissed, his left cheek still squished against the floors.

"You're so mean," he whined again.

Reluctantly, they all pulled themselves up off the floor clutching their aching heads. And Klaus made a grab for the stair banister to steady himself, all the while a sickly pale replacing his usual hue.

Nobody had time to speak before another faraway explosion grew from deep below their feet. The adrenaline pumping through their veins finally allowed them to put together enough of the puzzle that whatever it was, it was miles below the earth.

And better yet, laid out like a magical trail of breadcrumbs for him to follow was the debris of broken lights twirling through the air just over Diego's shoulders and up the stairs. Following in its path, the chandelier that was still tethered to the ceiling, and the ornaments once decorating the table in the entrance - bits of the Hargreeevs house all came crashing together. All of them, fighting for who could get to the second floor first and bring Diego, Allison, Klaus and Luther's attention to the flickering lights leaking out from the hall and beckoning them up.

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The lights flipped on revealing the figure waiting for Vanya in her living room from where he patiently sat under her reading lamp.

"Jesus!" She hissed, one hand still glued to the wall to steady herself and the other clutching her beating heart.

"You should have locks on your windows," was Five's response.

"I live on the second floor," she says, angrily throwing her keys in the bowl.

"Rapists can climb,"

Her eyes fluttered closed as she released the heaviest sigh she had experienced all day. An impressive feat for today of all days. "You're so weird," she said, numb from the days events and gently closed the front door.

Vanya discards her coat and takes a seat across from him on the couch. Her eyes widen when they snag on the spots of crimson creeping up on his uniform.

"Is that blood?" She asked cautiously, knowing better than to fuss and scare him off.

He shifts a bit in his seat, looking as if he's trying to hide his discomfort. "It's nothing."

Her instincts are to ask him what happened, to insist that no, it's obviously not nothing but again she knows better with Five. I stead she settles on one question at a time.

"Why are you here?"

In the split-second silence that follows her question, she sees a lifetime of agony in his eyes. But unlike what she saw in Pogo more than twice today, she knew the pain he held behind his eyes extended far beyond his own. There was a great deal of grief and an unbearable and unimaginable weight sitting upon his shoulders. And in that same split second Vanya almost feared his answer.

"I've decided you're the only one I can trust,"

The question that clawed at her from the back of her mind, the one that begged to jump off her tongue since he got back only grew stronger; What exactly did he know?

"Why me?" She asks instead.

For a moment his eyes softened just as they had back at the mansion. Just like that their discussion came flying back to her. "Because you'll listen."

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Only the sounds of an electrical hum steadily growing louder upon approach and the creak of the floorboards fill the silence left to haunt the walls of the Hargreeves mansion. As they edge closer down the hall, passing one another's bedrooms the sound of their hearts beating in their ears battles for the dominance over the haunting hum they're chasing.

They all feel it... the feeling in the bones that tells them nothing is ever going to be the same again. And Diego feels it again. It's faint and incredibly difficult to pin down but it's as if a fading trace of that pull in his gut remains from what pulled him and his siblings up.

A fading trace of something that couldn't let him go...

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Vanya returns with a disinfectant and bandages in hand and an unshakeable feeling of dread in her stomach. Without a word, she begins to tend to his wound. As she quietly works he almost shares with her how the horrible cut on his arm came to be, but ultimately decided she wouldn't want to hear he had to cut out his tracker. Nor does he want to explain why he had a tracker in the first place.

No, instead he draws in a slow and steady breath and bites the bullet.

"When I jumped forward and got stuck in the future, do you know what I found?"

"No,"

A fearful look lives deep behind Diego's eyes as he looks upon his siblings' haunted faces. The unexplainable trail left behind for them to follow had come to a dead-end of their bedroom hallway. Tucked away in a dark corner none of them had any reason to visit was the old service elevator. When asked, Reginald had told them it had been installed before the purchase of the property and was out of order and highly unstable; that none of them were permitted to use it and anyone who disobeyed him would not receive sympathy or assistance less something go horribly wrong.

And as they stood before it now, the rundown-looking old elevator was now overflowing with scarlet light seeming to erupt from the bottom of the earth where the shaft started. A gentle breeze that smelled of pressurized air spilled out from behind the iron gates and out into the hallway inviting the five pairs of prying eyes. They each share a grave look, the same damning realizations hitting them simultaneously. Luther and Diego share the same thought and get to work prying open the iron doors.

When Vanya picks her eyes up from Five's wound as she works, she's horrified to find the look in his eyes. They're far away, looking past her and into a troubled past she has yet to discover is the not-so-distant future. Her brother had always been a bit if pessimist, but what she saw now brought a sharp chill that zapped her skin and left her with a sour taste on her tongue. This wasn't pessimism, this was untold horror and defeat. He finally pries his eyes away from the spot his daze had landed him on and looks to Vanya with a seriousness unnervingly grave.

"Nothing," he answers.

As Luther, Diego, Allison, Klaus and Ben sink farther into the earth, chasing the scarlet light so too do their stomachs. The elevator ride is slow but they each feel as if they are plummeting to their deaths. The silence is challenged only by the sound of metal grinding against metal and the erratic and intense beating of their hearts in their ears. Diego inches closer to the closed doors and watching intently as the walls of the elevator shaft race by, all the while trying desperately to ignore the pull in his gut growing ever stronger.

"Absolutely nothing."

The deeper and deeper they sunk the colder the air around them grew. Soon enough, it was completely frigid. And had it not been for the four of them packed into the elevator like sardines and absorbing extra body heat, it would have been a wonder if their breath hadn't danced before them in the air. And as they got closer the brighter the mysterious light seeping through the cracks in the doors grew. It was obvious to them now that the elevator had been covering up something big, but it begged the question; just what were they to find down here?

And then a lurching shudder shook them nearly off their feet when the elevator came to a sudden halt.

They had reached the bottom. And the doors inched themselves apart.

"As far as I could tell, I was the last person left alive,"

They expected a great many things when the elevator doors parted. Anything, it would seem, apart from what they found.

A hallway. A long and stretching hallway that was as cold and unforgiving as the air felt. At the very end, a reinforced titanium wall wailed at them with a shrill and repetitive alarm. Matching the shrill cry was a single giant red bulb above the only door that sat in the center.

Cautiously they all pooled out into the hallway and were met immediately with the overpowering musk they had smelled before. It was obvious where it was coming from now as they looked at the rectangle where they could only assume was once the sole window judging by the broken shards of glass clinging to the sides.

"I never figured out what ended the human race, but..."

Something as called for as small as a cautious glance was farthest from their minds as they crept down the hallway. They were terrified of what lied beneath but they knew very well they had no choice but to find out.

The scarlet light they now stood underneath did plenty to light their aggrieved faces as the breeze blew at their faces from the broken window. And yet, it barely lit what lied beyond the ring of shattered glass; judging by the brief flashes of red light that managed to fit through the window they were shown glimpses of yet another reinforced wall. More beyond that was as good as a guess. But it did allow Luther to reach one well-protected arm inside. His gloved hand felt along the wall before landing on a spindle handle he managed to open in one swift gesture.

His brothers and sister watched with great intensity as the titanium door crept open with a shuddering and metallic whine.

With bated breath they crossed the threshold and pooled into sudden darkness. As they did, they could hear and feel the crunching of glass underneath their shoes. Their flashlights did little to light the way, and it wasn't until now that they realized moonlight had done most of the work back upstairs. More so than the dimming and dying flashlights in their hands. They felt around in darkness when the earsplitting whine of the door falling closed behind them. It was near impossible for them to whirl around on their heels without becoming completely disoriented.

The light streaming in on their panicked faces reminded them how easy it was to open the door and quickly put them at ease. As much as the situation granted that is. Before them still was another wall, cold to the touch. All except for one space embedded into the wall that Klaus had found with his hand. It felt like glass, almost like a screen and he was shocked to find how right he was when a blank screen flickered on. It was near his shoulders in height they found, and it whatever purpose it meant to serve would yield no results given its flash of glitching white light.

The only good thing to come of it was the short-circuit it was experiencing. That and what it had accidentally unlocked.

A sudden click made them jump, ripping their attention away from the glitching screen and onto a small steel rectangle near Diego's face and a small hiss followed. It was seconds before they realized it was steel plate unsheathing yet another window.

"I found something else,"

The window was no bigger than what one would see on an airplane and was made up of several sheets of tempered glass. But through it, the sterile white light illuminated the terror that had befallen their faces at the sight of the prisoner before them. The shock of it all, the sight unfolding before them was enough to break loose a quiet exclamation from Diego.

You were floating amongst a bright white room as if you were sinking to the bottom of the ocean and yet not a drop of water was in sight. The linen, almost scrub-like material on your body drifted and waved from your limbs like an invisible tide was gently pulling you along. Your eyes were closed and blood dripped from your nose and mouth, departing from your skin and floating in the air inches from your face in small droplets.

In your own tiny corner of the world, you existed and had done so for the past 28 years when the earthquakes first started. Everything about you defied the laws of physics and demanded to be challenged. Nothing about the sight of your presence, locked away in a hole thrown away by their father put them at ease. Neither did the sudden influx of the scattered materials around the chamber you were held in when they began to float around you. The pull in everyone's gut returned and when it did the light outside the first line of defense sped up. It grew louder and more shrill and it felt to the Hargreeves as if they had boarded a plane that took off in flight; pressure in their ears grew and a dull hum took over.

You. You were the cause all along and as you shook the world around you now, something changed. It was a change they all felt and one you had felt too. For no sooner had the tremor begun did your eyes rip open to gaze upon your new visitors.

𝐍𝐔𝐌𝐁𝐄𝐑 𝐙𝐄𝐑𝐎
"𝐘/𝐍"

"Oh, you gotta be shittin' me,"

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Navajo & Hopi Families Relief Fund:

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National Indigenous Women's Resources Center:

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LGBTQ+ Topics Carrd:

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