Petals For Brains | Number Five Book II

🌷CHAPTER 1: The Blasted Alleyway🌷

When the world went up in flames, only seven survived. Were they lucky? Perhaps. But that isn't usually the word one would use to describe the lives of the Hargreeves. Their brush with the apocalypse had been a whirlwind indeed. Such powers do tend to attract chaos. Now, that is a word to describe a bunch like them. When siblings stare the world's end in the eyes, what is there left for them to do but travel back and simply try again? But how were they to know that 2019 would end up being so far away.

~~~

A massive blob of electric blue appeared in the sky out of thin air just a few feet away from an otherwise busy street in Dallas, Texas. Sparks and a series of static whirring emitted from it as little objects began to take flight aimlessly, being thrown by the unknown source of energy. It wasn't long when the unknown mess of blue spat out something, or better yet, someone. The man let out a shriek as he fell out of the portal and tumbling down and landing harshly on his back with an appropriate thud. A few wheezes escaped him, willing his poor bruised body to stand up but failing, hoping to regain a sliver of composure only for his head to feel as if it were beaten over and over again with a blunt object.

"That was..." He began sucking in a sharp breath in the process of clutching at his skull as the headache ripped through it.

"Exhilarating." The man did not even flinch as he heard a voice next to him complete his sentence, in fact Klaus chose to stay on the floor as Ben, looked up fully expecting for his sibling to come cascading down, but he soon realized that no one else followed them from the portal. "Where's Five?" The ghost man expressed concern gripping him as much as it could a ghost, looking around for his older baby brother, while Klaus, stumbled around the dirty concrete mumbling a strained 'huh?' before fixing his eyes on the portal above them.

In a haze of panic, the gruff man began to scream his siblings' names one by one. As if the mention of their names would cause them to come spilling out of the portal. But as life would have it luck nor good fortune would never be on the Hargreeves' side. The portal let out few more whizzes before it fizzled out into nothing leaving the bright and cloudless sky on the background.

"Oh they're gone." Klaus utters in his disappointment, looking down as if to ponder his next move. The brothers begin to walk towards the street and looked around. Peculiar buildings, vintage cars, and people, but nothing like those one would see in 2019. "So where the hell are we?" The seance asks, his sentence faltering as he looks up to see his surroundings. The both of them trudge down the street, their eyes curiously fleeting from one thing to another, Ben even almost getting trampled by a woman with a purpose and her stroller.

"I think the question is: 'When are we?'" he says dumbfounded eyes still strained on the woman and her tight curls who were now bouncing away from them, and before he knows it he turns and watches Klaus hurriedly approaching a man on the street.

"Excuse me sir. Sorry to bother you, but could you tell me what year it is? Or what day?" His words fizzled out into a whisper as he himself realized how ridiculous it sounded.The unsuspecting man simply ignored him, with a slight scowl on his face, clearly unnerved by the ecclectic man in his unconventional clothes and choice of hairstyle. Klaus, still very much dazed from this dreamlike experience was snapped back by Ben's calls. He approached his brother with much gusto and saw him hovering over a trash bin, pointing towards a discarded magazine sitting on the very top. He snatches the glossy pile of paper and read the date out load for both of them. "February 11, 1960" and as if the words would warp and change, he read it again and again, and again, until it finally sunk in. He could feel his skin begin to pebble at the realization and his wild eyes met his brother's equally troubled pair.