(OLD) World to Ashes (book one) - OK K.O.!

Chapter Fourteen - A Strange Notebook

K.O. slept and woke up at dusk. He honestly found it funny how he and Potato now had to get up at sunset instead of sunrise for the sake of finding and meeting the anonymous hero, which he wasn't sure he wanted to do anymore.

He knew he had to do it, for Colewort, but deep down he really didn't want to do this anymore. He was at least grateful to get a break tonight, so neither of them would have to go out tonight. Despite that, he was pretty bored with hardly anything to do.

"I wonder if the hackpack has any games," K.O. said to himself. "I guess I can check."

***

"Told you there were still heroes around, dad!" Darrel shouted, holding up the two halves of Colewort's body in front of Boxman. "But you didn't want to believe me!"

Boxman looked at Darrel in surprise, unable to believe what he was seeing. All this time he had thought heroes were gone completely, but apparently he was wrong this time around. He just shook his head and snapped himself out of his thoughts.

"Were there any others?" Boxman asked. Darrel nodded in response, making Boxman cringe at the fact there were a few more heroes out there. "Who were they? Could you recognize them? Did you see them at all?"

"Yeah, actually," Darrel responded. "One of them was a small little rabbit, and the other one was, umm --" Darrel stopped in the middle of his sentence. He really didn't want to say the name, not after what happened last time someone mentioned that name.

"Who else? Tell me, Darrel."

Darrel stammered, trying to get the words out. "I - It was, K.O., dad," he finally managed to say. Boxman's eyes went wide in horror when K.O.'s name was mentioned, and he almost seemed to cower in fear.

"Do you know what this means, Darrel?" Boxman asked, grabbing onto Darrel's face with both his hands. Darrel quickly shook his head in response, starting to get freaked out by the way Boxman was acting.

"We need to call in Venomous, now. We need to tell him that K.O.'s still alive and out there." Darrel has never heard Boxman sound so frantic and scared before, and it worried him.

"Trust me, he'll know what to do. He has to."

***

Potato walked into the area K.O. was, surprised to see K.O. playing a game of Tetris on the hackpack. She actually smiled a bit at that, knowing that he was doing a bit better than he was last night. She waited until he got a game over before she caught his attention, and at that moment he looked slightly embarrassed.

"Uhh, hi, Potato," he said, rubbing the back of his head lightly. "How long have you been standing there?"

"Not too long," she replied. "Just long enough to see that you've found a game on the hackpack that you seem to enjoy playing."

He chuckled a small bit and looked at the ground, blushing. "Uh, sorry," he said, still chuckling. "I kinda got a bit bored while waiting for you to wake up or whatever. This thing has a two player mode if you want to --"

"Nah, I'm good," she said. "I actually found something that I want to show you."

K.O.'s eyes lit up with curiosity as Potato pulled out something from her bag. He was shocked to see it was a small notebook, and was actually pretty confused by it as well.

"I found it around the corner," she said, setting it next to her bed and turning on the small, slightly broken lamp next to it. "It looks pretty old, but it might have something important inside of it."

K.O. sat down next to Potato as she opened up the notebook and flipped through the pages one by one. On some pages there was writing, and others there were extremely messy sketches of drawings. Some of the things that were written and most of the sketches in the book really made him uncomfortable.

Potato stopped flipping through once she reached a page with some writing on it. It was pretty messy and written with pen, but he was able to make out what it said.

12 - 18 - 201W

It's happening again. I don't think I'm safe anymore. I don't think this world will be any more safe here pretty soon. He's going to unleash it, I know he is. Nobody is safe, not anymore.

K.O. felt his heart sink. He didn't really know who wrote this, but he felt sympathy for them. One of the things that threw him off was the date the note was written, which was almost a year before the nuke was unleashed.

"Potato, do you think they were talking about the wipeout?" K.O. asked, even more confused than he was before.

"I'm not entirely sure, K.O.," Potato responded.

"But I think that might be it."

(A/N) Whoo boy, here's a good chapter with some lore and plot-related stuff! Haha, I'm just gonna sit back and let the theories and speculation role in, because I want to know what everyone is thinking right now.

This was a really fun chapter to write, honestly xP

Well, anyway, please vote and comment if you enjoyed, and I'll see you in the next chapter! Bai! ^.^