Collisions

Chapter 6: Oh, Brother!

“Corey!” a voice called through the scene. His head turned to look. It was Kayla, seeming panicked. “Something’s happening…look up!”

Up until this point, Corey had been searching the forest intently for the Stone, with no luck. When he looked up, he saw a bright light. Evil laughter suddenly shook the scene, and Corey recognized this.

Zach, in his human form, appeared. However, his normally brown hair was coal black, his skin withered and light purple, his eyes turned bright red, whites and all, and deformed wings sprouting from his back.

“You’re too late, you know…” Zach said, and his voice was distorted. “Now that I have all five Dimensional Stones, I just need to celebrate with a little light show...…After all, this is how the villain of this particular story would have won anyway…making all the characters of this forest…Extinct.”

Zach began to glow with white lightning. It shot out in multiple directions, and Corey heard all the denizens of the forest scream. Even the birds that warned of impending danger in the universe were destroyed. An aura appeared around Zach.

“And now, it’s time to finish this…finally, a world with villains’ victory…shall be born!!” Zach declared, and then a large black beam of energy was shot right at Corey and Kayla. A blinding light filled Corey’s eyes…

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In his campsite outside the crossroads, Corey slept soundly in his human form, until he sharply gasped and leapt from his slumber in a cold sweat. He rubbed the heel of his palms against his eyes. After doing so, the boy took a quick look outside. The sky was a light blue hue, with the sun barely rising.

“Ugh, 6 AM? That nightmare was worse than I thought,” Corey mumbled, still tired. He decided to eat breakfast anyway and return to the forest as soon as the first peak of sunlight went over the horizon. “If I let Zach get that last Dimensional Stone, it’s not just me that’s going to take a hit. It’s certainly not just my universe…but theirs as well. I have to hurry and find that last Dimensional Stone.”

He decided to mull over his situation for a moment longer, and discovered that he had in fact managed to boost Bambi’s courage and self-confidence by an unknown amount. The teen closed his eyes in thought, and entered a meditative state of thought. Time was running out on both fronts. Either Bambi would have to leave for his new home, far away, as dictated by the original timeline, or Zach would find the last Dimensional Stone and create Armageddon.

Zach’s motives, Corey remembered, were almost the exact same as Zer’s motives for getting the Dimensional Stones. And Zer wasn’t destroyed, just as Gex himself had told Corey. Could it be that Zach wasn’t in control of his actions this time around?

The sunlight brightened, and a little came in Corey’s tent, signaling it was time to get his deer on. Bad puns aside, once Corey had once more disguised himself as a fawn, he exited his tent and made his way back into the forest so that he could continue fulfilling his mission objectives. This time, he decided to try and look for the Dimensional Stone, thinking that he’d done almost enough to help Bambi with his bully problem.

He searched high and low, searching every bush, tree, and hollow log for his target. To him, minutes became hours as his efforts were proving fruitless. Adding insult to injury, he was still tired since he didn’t sleep so well the preceding night. So poor Corey, as a deer, was stumbling around, half-dead to the world around him, his primary focus on finding the final Dimensional Stone.

As an hour finally passed, Corey could take no more, completely exhausted due to the lack of sleep, and laid down, right there, in the middle of the forest, and fell asleep in a small clearing surrounded by trees. Today’s search for the Dimensional Stone, as far as he knew, was fruitless.