The Simulacrum

The light of the morning sun gently streamed through the gaps between the plain, dark blue blackout curtains of Joshua's room. The blinds rattled and swayed in the soft, late-summer breeze, filling the air with the crisp scent of the coming autumn. It was the perfect weather to laze around in bed, yet that wasn't an option for our hero.

"Good morning."

He was greeted by a gentle voice by his side, so he groggily opened his eyes, and he immediately met the golden gaze of the girl sharing the same pillow with him. He closed his eyes again, but only because he had to stifle a yawn that threatened to escape his mouth. After that, he turned onto his side, so he could face her and responded with a carefree, "Morning, Deus. Is Angie still asleep?"

She exhaled a soft huff and sat up in the bed, revealing a rather adorable bunny rabbit printed pyjama top.

"Obviously. Both of you need to learn how to wake up on time."

"Yeah, yeah. Sorry about that," Joshua cooed to placate her and reached out a hand, cupping her cheek with his palm.

"You're not reflecting at all," the Celestial griped, yet she naturally leaned into his touch, even going as far as to cover his hand with hers. She closed her eyes and sighed, and the soft, affectionate smile on her lips told its own story. It didn't last long though, as she reached out to playfully poke Joshua's forehead and added, "We need to get up. You know what day it is today."

For emphasis, she gestured at the gnashing ivory jaws on the wall.

<...>

For emphasis, she gestured at the calendar on the wall, and the boy followed her gaze.

"Oh, that," he noted in a noncommittal voice, and then he turned back towards her and flashed a toothy grin. "Time flies by in good company, huh?"

Deus rolled her eyes and flicked her long, sandy-blonde hair over her shoulder. She clearly wanted to say something meaningful, but then she shuddered, and her eyes turned both blue and sleepy.

"Um... Ah. Good morning, sleepyhead," Angeline greeted him with a yawn.

"Don't call me a sleepyhead, sleepyhead," Joshua argued back with a smirk and poked his girlfriend's forehead. "I woke up before you."

"Deus woke up first, and we're the same person, so I technically woke up before you," she posited with a pout that made the boy chuckle.

"How come you're only bringing that up nowadays whenever it's convenient for you?" After a moment of hesitation, he grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her down on the bed again.

"Hey, you!" she exclaimed, her face flushed. "Aren't we supposed to get up early today?"

"Five minutes," he negotiated while wrapping his arms around her.

"Aw, fine. Five minutes," she agreed with a resigned sigh, but it was clearly just a pretence, as she quickly snuggled up to his chest and let out a long, contented sigh.

It was at this point that Deus momentarily came to the surface again to declare, "You two are incorrigible," but despite her words, she nuzzled even closer to him and closed her eyes.

They stayed like that for a while, their limbs intertwined and their breathing in perfect sync. Sadly, five minutes was a short time, and before long, the bone-white maw on the nightst—

<...>

Before long, the cartoon fox-shaped alarm clock on the nightstand began to buzz, and the boy's hand shot out from under the blanket and slapped it into submission. There were a couple of groans, and it took a few seconds before they mustered up the will to disentangle themselves from each other, and Joshua sat up first.

"Oh, fine. Let's get dressed and just go."

"Okay!" Angie exclaimed with a smile, and she rolled out of bed. She began to undress without any concern, and even though it wasn't an entirely uncommon occurrence these days, the boy still sneaked a few peeks at her. Not that she would've minded. As she casually tossed her pyjama top onto the bed, she looked over her shoulder and said, "You know, I just realised something."

Joshua responded with an absent-minded, "Yes?" while trying not to stare too hard.

"This was our last summer break. I mean, ever." She paused for a moment while looking for her school uniform, and then added, "It's kind of surreal, isn't it?"

"I mean, it's something everyone goes through," Joshua pointed out while putting on his own school uniform. "We're gonna be seniors, and then we'll graduate. That's how school works."

"I know, it's just..." Angie finished putting on most of her uniform and turned around to face Joshua, only to fall silent. Then, her silence turned into snickers, which then turned into giggles.

"What's so funny?"

"Nothing. It's just... I think you might need a new uniform."

Joshua exhaled a sigh and stopped trying to button up the sleeve of his shirt.

"Yeah. I really should've tried this on first." He looked over himself and whispered, "A lot has changed since this time last year, huh?"

He wasn't exaggerating. While it wasn't unheard of to go through one last growth spurt at his age, Joshua's physique had changed more drastically than most. The uniform that fit him perfectly last year was now uncomfortably tight around the chest and shoulders, not to mention it was also about a palm short on his arms. To make things even more awkward, his height also increased a bit, so his trousers were too short to cover his ankles.

These changes were the result of not only months of training and fighting, but also the profound effects of becoming an ************* *********** had on his physiology. Yet, his girlfriend interpreted his comment in a different light, and enthusiastically nodded along.

"For sure! I mean, think about it!" She raised her right hand to eye-level and started counting on her fingers. "Last time this year, we weren't even dating, Deus wasn't with us, the Elysium and the Abyss were still enemies, and ************ of ********** were still *************!"

<...>

Joshua couldn't argue with that, so he just nodded along with a long, drawn-out sigh.

"And yet, even after all this, we're still going to school, huh?"

"Of course," Deus chimed in, taking control of her body for a second. "******** would be very upset if we didn't." Her eye-colour shifted back to blue, and Angie agreed with gusto. "Exactly! If we tried to ditch school, ************ would be sooo mad at us! ********'d say something like, 'You're still minors, so go to school! It's common sense!'"

"Yeah, totally," Joshua agreed and used his thumb over his shoulder to point at the amalgam of sharp talons and beaks leading into the void of complete non-exis—

<......>

...

He used his thumb to point at the door leading to the upper floor of his home and said, "Speaking of which, let's get going. We have to meet up with the others, too."

"Right!" Angie followed him with a skip in her step. As she climbed the stairs behind him, she asked, "What about breakfast?"

"I'm pretty sure we don't have time for that," Joshua grumbled and pointedly gestured at the bo— cla— clock. He gestured at the clock on the living room's wall.

"But what if I starve?" she pleaded with an innocent look that would've made an angel blush. Joshua could only roll his eyes in response.

"You're not gonna starve. We ate a big dinner last night."

"To be fair," Deus chimed in without warning, turning Angeline's cherubic expression into one of deadpan seriousness, "we did expend a lot of energy last night. You were unusually... vigorous."

Josh blurted out a flat, "What?" in mild confusion, while Angeline's face shifted once again when she reasserted control, and she turned beet red.

"Aaah! Deus, don't be a perv!"

"I'm not a p-perv!" her other half insisted with audible outrage. "Don't try to shift responsibility upon me, Girl! You were the one who wanted to try doing that preposterous position with the—"

Joshua interrupted their argument by grabbing her hand, accompanied by a frantic, "Never mind that! We'll just grab something from the convenience store at the crossing, okay?"

"Okay!" Angie agreed, though she was still a tad flustered from before.

The two of them soon left Joshua's home, holding hands all the while, even if it made putting on their shoes more troublesome than it had to be. They were soon on their way, walking down the road. The sun was bright and warm, the last embers of summer still lingering on, yet the wind already carried the chill of autumn.

The bustling city of Timaeus was already in the throes of its usual morning hustle. Cars were filling the streets and people were milling about, all of them rushing towards their workplace or other destinations on the churning rivers of ivory fangs.

<...>

On the languid meadows of ivory bones and claws.

<...ngh...>

On the pristine ivory-white tiles of the sidewalk.

They were men and women of all ages and creeds, each of them clad in clothes befitting their station, from the humble factory worker to the haughty businessmen in their expensive suits and ties. They were all the main characters of their own lives, and thus, they were unique and special in their own way, each and every one of them.

As such, busy with their own daily troubles and complex internal worlds, they had little time and attention to spare for the young couple, the true unsung heroes of this world, without whom none could enjoy this special day of utter mundanity.

As they walked, Joshua's mind also wandered, and he eventually turned to Angeline with the words, "Everything's so peaceful."

"Peace is good," she declared with a falsetto voice, clearly mimicking someone.

"Yeah, that does sound like something he would say," Joshua grumbled, but then he reiterated, "But what I was trying to say is that it's weird after how ridiculously bullcrap last year was."

"True. But... that's the past, right?" Angie mused with a distant look on her face. "We made it through somehow, and now we can just live a normal life. That's what we were fighting for, isn't it?"

"Well, yeah, but..." He exhaled a shallow sigh. "I mean, I can still barely believe that we pulled through that battle at the end."

"You're still worried about the Abyss? But Elysium and the Abyss are at peace now, remember?"

"Yeah, I know, but it's still gonna take ages to sort it all out, and now I'll have to keep moving between the two like a cloud of lacerating fangs and—"

<...>

"... moving between the two like a freaking ping-pong ball! My head already hurts just from thinking about it."

Angeline playfully swatted at his shoulder with the words, "Oh, hush, you silly-squirrel!" followed by a slight pout. "We agreed that we aren't doing any politicking until we graduate."

"Yeah, but it's different for you. You have the whole ex-Directorate, or whatever they call them now, taking care of stuff in Elysium, but the Abyss was turned upside down by that whole fiasco. It's gonna take years before things settle down enough to get a proper government running again."

"And that's not something for us to worry about right now," Angeline declared with a huff. "Let's focus on school and getting into a good university first, and leave the annoying politics stuff to the adults."

"And *********," Josh pointed out, causing Angeline's eye colour to shift.

"True. There's no helping ********** sticking his nose into every single detail."

As the two of them continued their discussion, they soon encountered a familiar group of anthropomorphic pack of vicious predators made of an amalgamation of thousands of off-white shards of bone and—

<...kh...>

...

They soon encountered a familiar group waiting for them at the usual crossroad.

"Angie! Josh!" the energetic redhead at the centre of the group called out, waving at them with her left hand over her head. "Come on, you guys! We're going to miss the opening speech!"

"We're not that late," the bespectacled girl at her side noted dispassionately as she pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose.

"Like, to be honest, I totally don't mind, like, missing Endy's droning. Fer shur," the brown-skinned girl at the edge of the group mumbled, her modified uniform tucked in and stitched up to the point it was just modest enough to still meet the dress code.

Joshua greeted his friends with a lazy wave and an equally laid-back, "Morning, guys," and then he stopped to count them.

All of them were here. Amelia, with her signature glasses. Penelope and Neige, inseparable as always. Sahi, tagging along, seemingly without a care in the world. And of course, there were Judy and Eleanor in the back, immersed in discussion.

"What is this? What even is this?" Eleanor hissed in a low voice. "Where's *********? A-Awawa? Why can't I say his name?!"

Judy stopped the blonde girl's mounting panic with a soft, "Hush," and an even softer finger placed on her lips. "I'm not sure what's going on either, but I have a hypothesis."

In the meantime, the childhood friend couple fully joined up with the group, and they all started their usual commute to Blue Cherry High. It was the same old path that the gang had walked a hundred times, the same familiar streets with the same familiar people on their way to their own destinations. There was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.

"Hey, guys? Guess what?" Penelope spoke up, sounding even more enthusiastic than usual. "Snowy and I are going to join the student council this year!"

Angie perked up with an interested, "Really?" and the silver-haired girl at their side awkwardly inclined her head in the affirmative.

"Y-Yes. We were asked about it, and..."

It was at this point that Sahi chimed in with a grin as wide as her face.

"Like, we need new recruits because, like, too many of the third years were totally devoured by gnashing maws of infi—"

<A...gh...>

...

"Like, too many members graduated, and we're totally low on manpower, so Paz made me, like, promise that I recruit people."

"Didn't he also graduate?" Josh absentmindedly asked, and the brown girl shrugged in return.

"Like, yeah, but he's still working in the School, so, like, he's not really leaving. It's, like, he's the shadow-president now." She let out a giggle. "That's, like, totally wicked, isn't it?"

Before anyone could respond to that, Penelope threw her fist in the air and declared, "And we're going to join the disciplinary committee! We're going to uphold order and justice and get extra recommendations after graduation!"

"Wait, you get endorsements for that? For university admissions and stuff?" Angie's eyes lit up, and she turned to Joshua. "Josh! We should join the student council, too!"

"Let's discuss this later." He made a vague gesture at the shop at the crossing, and asked, "Didn't you want to get some snacks?"

"Not snack, breakfast! And yes!" She turned on her heel, the previous conversation all but forgotten, and rushed past the others with a cheery, "Be right back! Don't leave me behind!"

Meanwhile, at the back of the group, Elanor looked thoroughly perplexed.

"This is way too weird. Why doesn't anyone else realize that ********* is missing? Or that all of this is weird?"

In lieu of an answer, Judy raised her hand and pointed at the simple metal band on her ring finger. The blond girl's eyes opened wide, and she hurriedly took a look at her own hand. Sure enough, the same simple ring adorned her ring finger.

"Right! But, does that mean it's another of those recon things, or...?"

"Ret-con, and I'm not sure," the deadpan girl spoke curtly, her foot nimbly stepping over the violently snapping bony jaw on the sidewalk. "Whatever is going on, I don't think we can do much about it. Let's make sure to stay close to each other and observe."

Eleanor nodded in agreement and followed her partner, carefully dancing over another array of gnashing jaws of ivory that tried to snatch her feet from under her.

<...gh...>

Carefully jumping over a small puddle of water on the sidewalk.

"Look! It's gone again!"

"What's gone again?" Neige inquired, looking somewhat baffled by their odd behaviour, but Judy quickly shook her head and dismissed her with a flat, "Never mind."

Like that, the small group finished their regular pilgrimage to the temple of learning called Blue Cherry High. By the time they reached the gates of the campus, their surroundings were filled with the sounds of the other students chatting and laughing. It was the same old schoolyard as usual, full of familiar skulls and teeth and claws. Nothing was out of the ordinary at all. Nothing at all.

<...ngh...!>

The morning assembly and the principal's speech were thoroughly extraordinary, just as usual. His speech was filled with inspiring words and deep metaphors, like the importance of using the opportunity of the last year in high school to gnaw their way to the surface of the ivory sea. It was a truly moving experience that everyone was going to fondly remember, but then it was time to head to class, so they all left the auditorium and made their way to the classrooms.

The classes were just as mundane as the rest of the day. The arch-magi of the Assembly maintained their cover-identities as teachers for another year, and they were all too eager to discuss the curriculum and their plans for the school year, such as their plans to introduce a mandatory class on the importance of avoiding the gnashing teeth of the earth and the sky. The students eagerly listened to the advice, just like they were supposed to.

It wasn't until the first lunch break of the new semester that the members of Joshua's inner circle converged once again, meeting up at their usual spot on the roof of the main building. They all arrived together and set up the benches, and soon they were sitting in the same configuration they were used to from the year before. Everything was the same as usual, with the late-summer sun illuminating their gathering from the beautiful bone-white noontime sky.

"This just so weird..." Joshua noted, causing Eleanor to turn to him with eyes wide open.

"It is, right?"

"Y-Yeah," he mumbled, taken aback by her intensity. "I mean, I think I talked about this with... someone in the past. At some point. I... can't exactly recall when, but the point is that it just feels so uncanny to come back to school after all we've been through."

"I can't disagree," Amelia said, sounding more tired than anything. "After our trip to the Abyss, and getting kidnapped, and everything that happened after it, a peaceful day like this feels just a tad surreal."

"Oh... So that's what you meant..." Eleanor whispered, sounding crestfallen, so Judy lightly patted her back to cheer her up.

"Yeah. I mean, what else could I be talking about?" Joshua asked her with a critically raised brow, and when he didn't receive an answer, he shook his head and reached into the gaping maw surrounded by jagged, serrated t—

<...>

He reached into his lunch box and picked up a strip of fried chicken breast.

"Seriously, I think it'll take some time getting used to normal life again. It's almost as if—"

But then he never got to finish his thought, as a tidal wave of bo—

<... Oh, for fuck's sake!>

...

But then he never got to finish his thought, because Angeline leaned over the back of the bench and nearly caused it to fall over, forcing Joshua to grab onto his lunchbox and lean the opposite way to balance her weight out.

"Hey, careful!"

"Sorry!" the Celestial girl responded with a smile. "I was just cloudgazing!"

"Oh? Did you see any fun shapes?" Penelope inquired as she craned her neck and squinted at the flocks of vicious jaws and fangs floating on the canvas of the ivory sky.

"Nah. But, you know? When things are peaceful like this, you're supposed to do this kind of stuff."

"Oh? Like, picnics, and cloudgazing?" Sahi interjected with a grin. "Like, I totally get you!"

"Well, yes." Neige agreed with a timid nod. "Things are very peaceful, and..."

<Oh, for the love of god, hurry it up! Please!>

Judy blinked. She didn't quite understand what startled her either, but there was a nagging sensation in her mind. Her eyes immediately darted to Eleanor, and when their gazes met, they both realised that they were in sync.

"Peace is good," Eleanor stated, causing the Celestial girl to lurch forward in her seat and point at her.

"Yeah! I just said that this morning, too!"

"Yes, but..." Eleanor tried to speak up, but even after racking her head for a while, she couldn't formulate a good response.

She sighed and slumped her shoulders, so it fell to Judy's shoulders to come up with something, and she stated, "This is only the beginning of the school year." She paused, then re-formulated the thought. "You could say this day is the beginning of the rest of our lives."

"Yeah, I suppose," Joshua agreed, if tentatively, looking quite confused.

"True," Amelia noted, and she absentmindedly adjusted her glasses. "We're going to be third years. Our last year of high school, and then... The future awaits."

"Yes, exactly!" Elanor perked up and pointed at her. "This is the beginning of our journey towards the future!" She glanced at Judy for support, but the deadpan girl didn't speak up, so she pressed on with, "And... um... Every new beginning comes from the ending of some other beginning!"

"Is that a quote?" Penelope asked, looking increasingly bamboozled by the conversation.

"M-Maybe?"

"What Elly's trying to say," Judy cut in, inspired by Eleanor's attempt, "is that there can't be a new beginning without ending what came before, so while it's the beginning of the rest of our lives, it's also the endings of all the yesterdays that brought us to this place."

"Oooh? How very, like, philosophical," Sahi noted without much interest, her attention more focused on the plate of deep-fried claws and mashed bones in front of her.

"The ending of all our yesterdays," Joshua echoed Judy as he got up from the bench and walked over to the fence of safety sinews around the roof of the skull, and he looked over the city of bones, his hand in his pockets. "I suppose you could say that. This is what all those struggles we went through were for. We fought robots and monsters, got kidnapped, some of us multiple times, nearly got assassinated, we battled self-appointed emperors and gods, and yet we won our peaceful new beginning."

"Yes! Exactly!" Eleanor insisted, looking a little nervous as the roof of the skull building was shaking under the onslaught of thousands of disembodied, snarling maws, the sound of gnashing, grinding, snapping, and tearing growing louder and louder. In other words, everything was peaceful and normal.

"Which means it's also the ending we earned," Judy doubled down, looking just as apprehensive, despite everything being perfectly ordinary.

"Right." Meanwhile, Angeline also got up from the bench and joined Joshua at the edge of the roof. He casually wrapped his arm around her waist, a very natural and practised motion, and let out a low hum. "Yes. I suppose as endings go, this is pretty good." He turned to the rest and raised his hand, as if toasting with a goblet, and echoed Eleanor with the words, "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end! Let our next ending be just as peaceful!"

"I'll drink to that!" Penelope joined in, raising her hand in a mirror motion, but then she faltered and whispered, "Erm... O-Once, I'm old enough, of course! I don't want to make ******** angry..."

Her timid words caused everyone on the rooftop to fall silent, only for chuckles to erupt all around. The perfect image of a peaceful day coming to a slow halt, the gears of time itself grinding to an inexorable halt, encasing them in a moment like amber, their faces forever frozen in a jovial smile, the world of bones and claws and teeth arrested in a happy ending.

...

Until the sun in the sky exploded, breaking the ivory canopy with a furious, "CHECKMATE, YOU BLOODY SON OF A MUPPET!"

But that was a story for a different time. A different beginning.