The Future Watching (fic, RPM, OC)

[estirose]

This is kind of a “Killing Muses” post; it features a muse that kind of didn’t know how to shut up. At least she’s short. Spoilers for the entire series of RPM, mostly for “Danger and Destiny part 2″ and “Ranger Red”.

“So, this is your world, huh?”

The girl turned to her friend, the one talking, as they sat together. She wasn’t sure what had tossed them and the others together, since they were all from different… realities, was the best she’d been able to figure, nor why they seemed to be traveling from world’s past to world’s past. Now, apparently, it was her turn.

“Yes.” She stared at the dome. “Corinth City. The only city that survived the apocalypse, more or less.” She watched the world around her, the people seemly carefree for all they had to be going through. “I’m guessing somewhere in the two years before Venjix was defeated.” The sky was too blue to be anything but artificial.

“The apocalypse your mom caused, right?”

She frowned. “Please be quiet about that. Mom’s involvement is not well-known.” She wished she hadn’t shared that tidbit of info, but after having to hear about how her companions had such awful parents, she’d had to point out that her mother had ended the world and her father had run with a cartel.

“Sorry,” her friend said apologetically. “Think you’ll run into your folks here, like Bobby did last world?”

“Maybe.” She allowed the possibility, though as her mom would have pointed out, it would be highly improbable. “Well, Dad, yes. Mom, no.”

Was her mom still hiding behind a screen and a letter? Was her father still part of the Scorpion Cartel? Had they met now, or was it yet to be?

There was a scuffle across the lake. She looked to see a fight going on at the play area they’d passed on the way into the park. Two figures were beating several mechanical figures. Grinders, she’d seen pictures, and the remains in her mom’s storeroom.

Her friend looked where she was looking. “Should we, um, run?” she asked, untangling her legs.

She shrugged. “Everything will work out in the end.” But she still fingered the emergency pack she kept in her pocket, the small first aid her mother had insisted that she carry with her at all times and the lockpicks her father had taught her to use. There was no shame in being prepared. Her extended, honorary family had made sure she could run well, take advantage of the wiry frame she’d inherited from her father.

But as she watched, the two figures beat the Grinders and a woman caught in the area walked away with her baby carriage.

She knew she wouldn’t be born for several more years; her mother had to learn to socialize more, the world had to recover. Her parents had to open their school and get married. She’d been carefully planned and had no siblings. But she felt a pang as she watched the baby carriage anyway.

The two figures yelled, the noise barely audible from where she sat, and then their forms were covered in armored bio-suits. Spandex, her father liked to say, to tease her mother, before her mother made him wash everything to make up for it. She’d seen pictures, video, but never the suits in action. Ranger Red and Ranger Green, she thought, as they ran off.

There was something comforting knowing that history was progressing well. That her father had met her mother. That she was going to happen.

“Yes,” She said, “Everything will be all right.”

And she wasn’t talking about the Grinders.

Crossposted from Ramblings Yet Once More here.