Bring The Crunch : The Aftermath

Prologue - The Mess Hall

(August, Friday the 13th 2004)

-"So he's like... a slave master ?"
-"Wow ! One of our beloved characters has a dark facet of his past that conflicts with contemporary moral standards, but also adds an interesting dynamic to his-"
-"Ah ! Now you really, REALLY don't want to go down that road."

Fastpass, Professor Chaos and the strange individual next to them looked at the elder with confused eyes.

-"What do you mean, mister ?" the professor asked.
-"You will start overanalyzing the guy, and find reasons for him to act this way, and you ultimately will create him a personality that will be completely different from his inside your head, like millions of people do every day on the Internet."
-"... People do that ? Jeez, i hope they don't th-think of me like that." the speedster wondered. "Wait, where did D-Douchebag go ?"

Nodoby was next to Butters anymore, but had anyone ever been there ? The boys remembered brown hair and an impassible gaze, but they were blurry. One second and he was gone just like a scream in the wind, striking and ephemeral at the same time.

-"Y'all have a lotta work to do, this camp will not build itself back alone." the old mechanic continued. "Good luck, kids."

The old man walked away into the forest along the path, under the large camp arch of which only one post remained, and disappeared like a ghost in the night.

Jimmy watched the shower building. The windows, broken into fragments of mirrors, were lying on the ground and a pipe was leaking, causing the blood of the dead counselor inside and running water to merge and flow under the locked door.

The observer had already known death but never mourning, and seeing this place ravaged on all sides, showering fire and blood from every opening gave him the feeling of having lost his home.

He had a realization : who could be the bastard who could have done that ?!

-"Doctor ! Doctor ? ...Timmy ?"

Jimmy audibly gasped. Timmy ! He turned to the Mess Hall : it was more destroyed than the other buildings, but the double doors were still standing and untouched, hiding the middle of the room. The speedster rushed through them purely for dramatic effect, and saw Butters behind them.

-"Do you think he's dead ?" he said with a trembling voice, pointing to the center of the room.

Jimmy followed his finger, and got stricken with a wave of worry. Timmy was lying in the middle of the room between two picnic tables, face down in blood that was not his, because there was another dead counselor behind him.

-"I'm not going to him !" Chaos declared. "What if he wakes up and kills me ?"

Butters was right to think so. The fight was tough.

Jimmy walked over to his friend, sat down and turned him onto his back. His movements were cautious, because deep down he was a little afraid too.

Timmy had a peaceful face and slow breathing : he fell asleep ! The speedster noticed marks on the bottom of his face, probably from landing on the Mess Hall. He was reassured, his colleague had nothing. Well, almost nothing.

He directed his gaze to the psychic's left hand : the palm had a shallow cut across it, spilling red. Jimmy pressed on it to stop the bleeding, his fingers intertwining with his friend's.

-"Call a counselor, Chaos !" he said to Butters. "We need b-bandages over here."

He bursted through the doors and ran to get her.

Jimmy stared at Timmy, then looked around for a bit. He knew it wasn't his friend's fault, after all, he loved camp as much as him. But he couldn't help resenting him a little.

He held back his emotions a lot tonight : he had to stay calm in order to resolve the mystery of the dead counselors. But he didn't expect the sudden turn of events, and just thinking about it made his stomach flip.

He looked at Timmy's peaceful and blood-covered face again. He raised him slightly and took him in his arms, not without some pain.

-"Motherf-fucker."

Jimmy then completely forgot himself and cried his eyes out on his unconscious friend's shoulder. If there was anything that mattered a little bit more than summer camp to him, it was Timmy.

The Last Counselor arrived, and saw the colleagues through the doors left open. She smiled, knowing the bond between these two because of the summers they spent at camp : she had her little hypothesis. After all, it was no simple luck if they were both on the blue team.