::End Of The Line – Aftermath::

Wendy felt certain that she'd done things exactly as directed.

She and Ike had left the utility room after their thirty-second countdown, and joined the crowd of drones who had responded to Marie's call to set up the experiment. She'd gone straight to her directed terminal, used the password she was given, and followed the directions printed on the little notebook Mysterion had handed her.

It had taken every ounce of willpower she had to keep working, even when the machine reached full power, even when she heard the screaming.

Even when it was more than one person screaming. She didn't even know exactly what she was doing, all she knew was what she'd been told, and that she hadn't reached the end of the list by the time it all started.

When she did reach the end of the list of inputs, everything on the lab level went dark. It was sudden, like someone had pulled the plug. All at once, the machine went quiet, and the sound of arcing electricity died. Her terminal, too, snapped and fizzled as the tube monitor lost power and the screen went dark.

Stepping away, she felt like she was in shock. She didn't know what had happened, and she was afraid to look.

Swallowing hard, she pivoted on her heel, turned around, and peered back into the main space of the lab.

Several lights above the platform had exploded, showering the area below with glass. Some of the drones had snapped out of Marie's control and taken cover below work benches, once again people with free will who were using it to cower.

Atop the platform, she saw a pair of slumped figures. One was the one she expected; Kenny, still strapped in, his head hung and all the tension having gone out of his body.

The other was Dee.

"Oh shit-"

A mad sprint was made down to the lab floor, past confused people who were trying to figure out what the hell was going on after being passengers in their own bodies for several hours. Others, further away from the machine, were still in their drone state, simply staring on in confusion. Wendy had no care about either- she was shoving people out of the way, rushing into get to her partners, her team, her friends-

Arrival brought on a sudden halt. She'd scaled the side of the machine, made it to the top, and felt her stomach drop as neither of her friends appeared to be awake or moving.

"No, no, no- c'mon, don't you dare, you guys are too stubborn for this..."

Wendy reached in to check Kenny first, forcing two fingers beneath his chin. His head bobbed freely as she grasped for a pulse.

Not finding one made her gasp, holding back a sob.

I did it right, I followed directions, he said they'd only die if we didn't do it right-

Before she could reach down to check Dee, a sound cut through the complex. It was loud, and horrible, but it wasn't a priming noise. No, it sounded more like...

An alarm.

Loud, blaring, the sort of alarm that would go off at school during a fire, if a touch more automated. After three, second-long cries of the thing, a recorded voice took over the PA system that most certainly not Marie.

"General evacuation, this is not a drill. General evacuation, this is not a drill."

Somewhere below them, something... rumbled, and then squealed. Not in a mechanical sense, like some new machine had come to life in the bowls of the facility. No, it sounded more like... metal sheeting tearing apart under the weight of moving rocks.

The dam was coming down- the facility was flooding.

Drones responded to the general evacuation order. It was strange to look up and see it happen, but the masses of people still under control began to move all at once and still do so in a surprisingly orderly manner. It was the others, who had gotten free by some function, that ran through everyone else at break-neck speed and cause others to stumble with their panic... still, they didn't make up an excessive mass, so hopefully they wouldn't cause much trouble.

They also wouldn't be much help; Dee was unconscious; she wouldn't be easy to move.

Least, Wendy hoped she was unconscious. She hadn't yet worked up the courage to check her pulse. Not after she felt Kenny's and found him without that vital rhythm.

"Wendy!"

A voice shouting for her from the far end of the room- she was confused at first, until she finally sighted Stan, having emerged from the stairwell near Containment just ahead of the wave of people who were heading for that stairwell to get the hell out of here. He sighted that, and sprinted out of the way and along the rim of the room some ways before coming down around the crowd, pumping his arms and digging in to get over her as fast as he could manage it while the alarms continued to blare.

"Wendy! It was amazing- I was down there, and there was a switch, and-- and it was YOU!"

He was babbling as he approached the machine, tripping over himself and stopping just short of climbing up it. It appeared he sensed at that point that something, besides the evacuation alarm, was... wrong.

"... are they...?"

"I mean... I'm not doctor, but it looks pretty bad. Probably a heart attack brought on by the electrical shock. I'd say he's a lost cause."

Wendy blinked. As the din of people shuffling out of the main lab went from its loudest to getting steadily quieter as people filed up the stairs, there was another clear voice in the room... and it wasn't Stan or Ike.

No, it was a voice she'd not heard very long ago at all.

"The other one could probably use a hospital. Electrical shock causes muscle contractions, and they've got a foreign object up their ass that might have caused a few lacerations... nothing a good surgeon can't fix, but... time is of the essence and all that."

Another voice. Another adult- a woman, who sounded... oddly conversational considering things.

"Who the fuck...?" Stan was having to come around the machine, as the voices were coming from a spot just before the cargo elevator, and solidly on the other side from him. Wendy, from the top of the machine, was able to turn her head and look down... and from elsewhere, probably still on the rim of the lab, she could hear Ike exclaiming with only the most colorful language.

"... you're okay?" Wendy asked in shock when she addressed them, disbelieving.

It couldn't be right. She'd just felt Kenny's pulse. The guy was dead as a door-nail.

"Immortality is a bitch, Callgirl." Mysterion smirked at her from beneath his hood, standing next to his partner. "Lucky for me, you and Ike modified the machine so it didn't take our abilities... and Stan killed the breaker just in time after the manual shut-down failed."

Her head was swimming. Just how much of the crew was here?

Wait, what had Stan just said, about someone helping him with a switch?

A tremor rocked the room. Light rigs above them shook, and more loose glass fell down from above. The sounds from below, of squealing metal and shifting earth, came again... and they were decidedly louder this time. Closer.

They also came with another key sound; rushing water.

"Express ticket out of this hellhole, any takers?" Buttlord called out, departing from Mysterion's side and approaching the side of the machine where Wendy had original found Ike while he'd still been a drone. Leaning out a little to watch her, to see this adult version of Dee still wearing the mask and the coat after crossing into adulthood, Wendy also found another member of the drama that had played out here.

Marie, collapsed next to the machine, her arm thrust into the open panel Ike had been inspecting when she'd found him.

The sleeve of her tan jacket was burnt, and faint smoke was rising. Buttlord picked the woman up like a sack of potatoes, and made motions with a purple glove for everyone to follow her as she scaled up to the top of the machine.

"Mysterion, would you do the honors?" She asked him on the way up.

"On it." He responded shortly, arriving first at the platform and going straight to the silver ball atop the plinth. Wendy watched as his gloved hands removed the restraints that had kept Kenny's palms affixed to the ball, the boy's corpse instantly falling lax. He didn't stop there, however, reaching beneath the silver ball to knock it in a few key places until it came free of the plinth with a hard clack.

"What are you guys doing?" Wendy quested as Stan climbed up the platform, wearing a bewildered look that didn't even know which question to ask first. Ike was following after him, puffing from having to run. "You're... what, fart-warping us out of here? Without the rest of your team?"

"Last member of our team knows how to handle herself." Mysterion responded with a snicker. "And how to get herself home... besides, we have to follow the rules."

"Rules?" Stan asked as Buttlord crouched down next to Wendy, putting a hand on her collapsed child-self. "What rules?"

"... never come in contact with your past self if you can help it." Buttlord muttered faintly.

"Why not?" Ike asked, somewhat dumbly.

Mysterion let out a bitter laugh. "... cause this kind of shit is always what it comes to."

A moment later, the group disappeared in a cloud of noxious gas.

Dee was awake.

Dimly awake, but awake. She wasn't entirely certain where she was, at first. Eyes squinted tightly, a tight frown over her face as she tried to get herself into the moment and understand where exactly she was.

Better question, where had she been?

Asking that brought on flashes, images of frantic horror. The electricity, the sound, the lights, Kenny-

Kenny-

"Sh-shh-shh- fellas, I think Dee's waking up..."

Who was that? Was that...?

She groaned a little, her head rolling to one side, lids fluttering as blurry colors began to organize themselves into shapes. Her brain hadn't made full contact with her body, but she was beginning to suspect that was a good thing. There was a smell in her nose, of sterile plastic and clean cotton sheets.

The hospital. She was in a hospital bed. She recognized the blue covers and the white curtain, and the grid pattern on the ceiling.

Lowering her gaze, and blinking quite a bit more... she recognized that there were people in her room. Four people, to be exact.

"Dee! Oh my goodness, buddy, it's been days!"

Butters couldn't contain himself, and Dee couldn't master herself to defend her bubble. It didn't matter, once she got over the shock the hug was more than permitted and welcome. She managed to master one hand atop his back, patting him weakly.

It was her right hand, she realized. It was all bandaged up, from wrist to fingers, made into a great big ball from which her fingertips protruded like swollen and darkly shaded sausages.

Looking up, she could identify the three others now. Kyle, Stan, and Eric. Stan was the next closest to the bed, and looked the second happiest to see her awake... though, to be fair, Butters set a high bar when it came to enthusiasm. Kyle smiled and nodded when eye contact was made, but was a step back with Eric.

Eric had his arms over his chest. He'd looked over at her, but promptly looked back away to pout.

Where's Kenny?

There was an image of him in her memory, strapped into a silver chair, slumped over, quiet, still-

No- no, if I remember...

She looked out at her friends, desperate.

Stan seemed to pick up on the look as Butters continued to hug her around the middle, his body half-bent onto the hospital bed.

"O-oh, uh... Kenny?"

She nodded, vigorously.

"What, aren't any of us good enough for you, Douchebag?!" Eric snapped. "You could have told us, y'know- you didn't have to fucking play games and-"

"Eric!" Kyle snapped. "Back off. Let 'em get their bearings."

Dee blinked, confused, as Butters withdrew. When he looked at her, he appeared very shy all of a sudden... maybe even a little ashamed.

What the ever-living fuck is going on with you fuckers?

"A bunch of us from the future came to help with what happened." Stan explained, also looking more than a little cagey. "Like as... legit heroes. Mysterion, Callgirl, and... Buttlord. They were all grown up, and you... I mean, future you... and Wendy told me about Marie, and Kartwright, and..."

… oh boy.

"You've been a girl, this whole time." Kyle stated.

"Her name's Alyssa." Cartman suddenly boasted, grinning. "After we all got caught up in that shit from your bitch-ass old lady version, Marie, that whole don't listen to anything Dee tells you bit got rid of all the crap you forced on me before, so I can tell anyone I please! Eat THAT, Douchebag!"

She winced back, shoulders shrugging high, mouth tightening as she grew more and more uncomfortable.

"They... they made me tell 'em the truth." Butters admitted, shamefully. "That I knew. I'm sorry..."

"Don't apologize Butters, bitch fuckin' lied to you." Cartman overruled. "Then again, that's all girls are fuckin' good for."

"Oh come off it, Eric!" Kyle snapped. "You can at least give her a chance to explain."

"How? She never fucking talks, and if she does, she'll scramble our fucking brains! Should sneak into her house and sew her mouth shut in her goddamn sleep."

Bickering. More bickering- that was what she needed to wake up to. Getting outed by time-traveling bullshit, and all the usual arguments. She felt her jaw clench. She would have hit Eric, but he was beyond her range and energy level. The more she became aware of her body, the more she became aware that everything fucking hurt.

Her ass, most of all.

She looked away from the others, finding her desire to speak at an all-time low. She didn't want to explain. She didn't want to talk. The only thing she wanted was something she suspected she couldn't have.

She wanted to see Kenny.

Someone pressed something into her left hand. The one that wasn't bandaged up to high hell. Her first instinct was to take that object and whip it at Eric's head, but she decided to at least look before she started throwing things.

It was a phone, open to a text to speech app. Looking up, she saw it was Stan who had given it to her, staring at her with earnest eyes.

She looked down, and then nodded a little, typing up a message while Kyle and Eric were still arguing in the background, and pressing the button after ensuring Stan's media volume was all the way up.

"I told Eric my name when I moved to town. He rejected it. I got mad. I got scared. I was afraid if you guys knew, you wouldn't hang out with me. You were the first real friends I ever had offline. I didn't want to lose you guys over something stupid. I just wanted to keep my group, so I lied."

Confessing the truth via robo-voice seemed to lack the kind of punctuation she always thought this moment would have... but it shut Kyle and Eric up by the first sentence. By the middle, they were all staring at her, but she couldn't bring herself to look back at them.

Things went quiet for a long while.

She typed another message, and tapped the talk button.

"I'm sorry."

Things were quiet for a second. Thirty seconds. Maybe a whole minute. Butters turned around towards the others.

"Well, I but you all feel like a buncha... a bunch of real jerks now, don'cha?"

"What.. the... fuck Cartman? She told you?"

Kyle, surprise, snapped right back into fighting with Eric.

"I was already determined on getting the new kid into the game, I wasn't gonna let her being a chick make things all bullshit and weird!" Eric snapped back. "And then I guess I kinda... forgot."

"You mean you went into denial!" Kyle rebutted. "You delusional moron!"

"Guys, guys!" Stan shouted over the top, getting between them. "... if we had known De- I mean... If we had known Alyssa was a girl, would we have ever let her hang out with us ever again after that game?"

"... well, looks like I'm the reason we have Douchebag as a friend at all, then!" Eric suddenly declared victory.

"You're also the reason the universe nearly collapsed, fatass!"

"Not me, some dickwaffle from an alternate universe who couldn't handle the responsibilities of success! I'm not gonna grow up into that guy- I am obviously the superior Eric Cartman in all the multiverse."

Dee was tapping at the phone in her lap with her good hand. Stan hadn't taken from her as of yet.

"Anyone wanna give me the cliff notes?"

"Oh, shoot, that's right, you've been out for a while!" Butters exclaimed. "Well, uh... actually, I might not be the best person to... I mean... U-uh... none of us really saw it all go down..."

"Take it easy dudes, I got this."

She experienced a shock. Another voice had joined the party, and it drug her focus to the other end of her hospital room, where the door was.

Someone else had just come in... someone wearing a bright orange parka.

KENNY!

She nearly yelped his name aloud, restraining the urge while sitting upright far before she should have been doing so unassisted. Butters cried out when she did so, slipping an arm beneath her torso and stopping her from immediately flopping back as she hissed in pain through her teeth.

"Oh, shit dude, take it easy!" Kyle yelped, moving in at the same time as Stan. She suddenly had a multitude of hands helping her sit up and scoot back, with Eric having the good sense to grab the remote for the bed and actually move the upper bit up into a more upright position for her to lay on without stressing herself.

"Heh... miss me?" Kenny snickered while arriving at the left of her bedside, opposite everyone else. He had his parka on, but unzipped, the scarf pulled down and his voice unmuffled for the time being. She noticed he was wearing the clothes she'd given him- the black T with the white rose on the chest, and the jeans.

Maybe he wasn't as hurt as a thought. Maybe he didn't die- that would explain why I remember... fuck me, though, it sure as shit seemed like he died.

She had to quickly wipe her face, before she legit started crying in front of everyone.

More than that, however, Kenny had also arrived with something in his hands- a well-worn notebook, and a box. The notebook looked pretty normal; the sort of thing one might find at the bottom of a drawer many years after it was actually used for school work, and mostly full of doodles. The box was of unassuming white cardboard; the kind a new phone might come in, but entirely unmarked.

"Done meeting with your future wife?" Stan smirked.

"Done meeting with yours." Kenny lobbed back.

"Wait- really?!" Stan crowed, leaning forward. "Did she really say that?!"

"Jesus, Stan, cool it off." Eric snickered. "You wanna tie the knot that bad, you better not tell her that before you spend a few more years playing the field, or you'll be stuck licking the same puss your entire life."

"They didn't say anything." Kenny rebutted with a snicker. "Against the rules... but Buttlord had a few gifts for themself."

For me?

The notebook and box were placed in her lap. Dee ended up giving Stan's phone back to him, just so she could occupy her good hand with checking both of the items out.

"Wait, giving themselves stuff- isn't that against the rules?" Butters asked, head cocked.

"Not if it's what they remembered." Kenny countered. "Buttlord remembered getting this stuff from themselves after all this happened... so that's what's gotta happen to keep the loop stable."

"I... I don't get it." Stan frowned.

"You don't want to." Kenny assured. "It's a headache."

Dee had managed to get the box open with one hand while the guys were talking over her recovery bed, fumbling it this way and that until the lid finally lifted up. Within, she found... something odd.

It looked like a sort of black fabric choker, but not necessarily as flimsy as a piece of jewelry. In fact, the bit that might have been a pendant didn't look decorative in the slightest; just a black circle that looked more like housing for a battery than anything she might wear for aesthetic. The clasp for it looked less delicate, too- like it was meant to hold up to some wear and tare, rather than the usual tiny little hook and clip style one would see on a choker.

There was a short note inside the box, underneath the item. She recognized the script... hers; if a little less sloppy.

Takes watch batteries, change it once a month. You can speak safely. Little bit of future tech, thank Wendy for it.

"What is it?" Kyle quested as she read the note. Shocked, she handed it up, and let him read it again- this time aloud and to the group.

"Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?"

Butters, again, set the bar for excitement. He quite literally could not contain himself, and began to zoom around what little floor space of the room was clear like a toddler who had just been told he was going to Disneyland.

"Well shit dude, put it on!" Stan encouraged.

Kinda hard to do that with one hand. She looked to Kenny, raising her eyebrows. He got her meaning pretty quickly, and reached in to help.

"Oh hey, lil indicator light on the top- it's green right now." Kenny told her as he helped her with it. "Guess it only lights up when it's... active? Must be heat sensitive."

Battery saver for when I take it off to sleep, I bet- Wendy thinks of everything.

With it on, a hush felt over the room. Even Eric looked pretty interested in what she might have to say to them, as a group, as her first time talking since the whole stick of truth thing. She wasn't even sure this was right- did this thing really work? She still didn't entirely know what happened... did she trust this future self who had dropped off this box and notebook?

Kenny did... that was good enough.

"... hi? I guess...?"

The assembled group burst out laughing, sputtering over themselves.

"Man- oh man-" Eric gasped. "SUUUuuuuper lame!"

She felt her cheeks color... but chuckled along all the same.

This felt okay.

"... so what happened?"

It was hours later when Alyssa finally got to ask the question to someone who might answer it. After Eric, Kyle, and Stan had left. Butters hung out for a while, but eventually his dad came to pick him up... but Kenny? Kenny had all but decided he had nowhere else to be.

No, not after he'd woken up back at home and seen that his family was alright.

Dying in the middle of the action was a bitch, but everyone thinking he had just disappeared put him in an optimal position to get the story from around town. There were plenty of witnesses to what happened, though most of the accounts were... uninformed at best. Wild speculation had taken over the adult spheres, and it seemed the only ones who had half a clue what was going on where the kids.

"It was a loop." He responded with a faint shrug.

"I got that." Alyssa rolled her eyes at him. Her parents had been by since she'd woken up, but she was still in recovery after some serious surgery on her ass- she'd be in the hospital for a few more days, at least... and Chris and Kelly appeared to have accepted that he was going to hang out while they had to go home, sleep, and continue being adults in the capitalist rat-race. "But the whole problem was repeated shifts, right? That one universe kept morphing and producing more versions of... well, me, and we kept becoming anchors, and holding together the futures of what should have either been collapsed or split timelines."

"Marie was trying to de-power you before you became an anchor." Kenny responded. "... but she was too late. She'd been too late for a while. Back with the whole Zombie thing, where you came back and got Kartwright to stop the experiment, so the whole thing didn't happen? If you weren't an anchor, you would have shifted when the future did. Instead, Kartwright had to put you down like Old Yeller."

"Kartwright- Marie! Where... what happened to them? I..."

I wanted to strangle Marie to death with her own fucking hat... and Kartwright just disappeared after we left the van...

"Gone- that's what I was getting to, if you'd let me finish." He smirked.

"Oh- sorry..."

"Apparently when we all went to the facility, one way or another, we settled our future enough to let that loop happen. Our future selves came back to make it work, and stabilize the turbulent point... kinda like back-stitching when you sew. They gave us the information, items, and directions we needed to come through okay... and they were there to blow the facility- it was a dam for an underground river. Whole place is flooded to the very top, now."

"You went back?"

"I... had some time, while you were out." He nodded. "I..." He trailed off, distracted from his explanation to her. "... what's the last thing you remember of me being there?"

She blinked. The question seemed to confuse her, and then upset her. He didn't understand why; she was used to him asking that by now. It was how he got a handle on how fucked up her memory was after he'd died and she'd forgotten, so he could tell her what really happened.

"... I don't remember you leaving. I remember rushing the machine, while you were on it. I remember both of us getting shocked through the hands, cause of the copper coin I brought up, the one you gave me... and I remember you in the chair after it was over. You..."

She went quiet.

"You weren't moving... I... I remembered, so I thought..."

"You remembered?"

He gaped. No one remembered.

No one ever remembered. Not besides Cartman, who was... his own kettle of fish. What the hell did she mean, she remembered?!

She looked towards her hand; the one that wall bandaged up. The one that had been holding the copper coin.

"... Your future self told me that coin was gonna save a life." He remembered faintly. "... she didn't say whose."

That was allowed to hang for a moment. Neither of them knew what to do with it.

"Maybe it's cause we were... I mean, the machine had something to do with powers, maybe we were... connected for a minute?" She posited, grasping at straws. "I... I don't really wanna test if it's permanent, if I'm always gonna remember now... I know it hurts, I... I heard you screaming."

"Hey, hey..." He reached across, to her good hand. "Lyssie... it's okay, we made it through okay."

"This time." She agreed, pensive. "... I guess for a while, too." She relented. "At least long enough for us to come back here, as partners, and help our kid-selves do it again." She laughed faintly at that. "... fuck me I hate time travel." She shook her head, letting out a sigh. "Alright, alright, so what did they do with Kartwright and Marie? And Eric, what the fuck happened to that fucked up version of Eric?"

"I'm... not sure." Kenny admitted. "Wendy says they took the silver ball from the top of the machine, and she's pretty sure it's some kind of macguffin. Buttlord took that thing in one hand, had Marie over her shoulder, and made Shitty Eric touch it, and then she just... fart-warped out of there, but she didn't actually go? But she did? Like the cloud cleared, Marie was gone, Shitty Eric was still there, and then it was Kartwright's turn. Apparently Mysterion- I mean... apparently future-me explained to Wendy that Buttlord learned how to side-step to alternate universes, and was returning everyone to their timelines at the right points to split them apart properly."

"... and here's betting Morgan fucking Freeman disappeared without a goddamn trace again."

"Yep."

He watched as her head flopped back in a cloud of red curls. "Fuck my entire life. Where the fuck was Kartwright after we left the Van?"

"Tried to follow us, ran into future Eric on the way, got turned back to secure Shitty Eric while we were all risking our lives making a time loop work."

"Lucky bitch, got the easy job- wait- wait, Future Eric?"

"Yeah, fucker saved me from getting trampled." Kenny let out a laugh... one that got louder as he watched his girlfriend sink her body further into her pile of pillows on her hospital bed.

"Y'know, I think I mean it. Fuck my life." She said again. "Fuck everything about my life- I am so sick of all this chaos- you know what I want? I wanna gave a big-old movie night with all the guys, with snacks, and music, and bullshit games, and staying up too fucking late talking about bullshit and starting fights. Can I do that? Cause I could really go for that right now. Just... lemme recharge, for the love of fuck."

"Think you can convince everyone to do a sleepover, now that your big secret is out?" Kenny quested.

She blinked, staring at the ceiling dully for a second... before a smirk curled up on her face.

"Yeah. Pretty sure I can. I speak dude."

Kenny let out one of his signature giggles.

"Sounds like fun to me."

~Fin

::The Author's Corner::

SEASON ONE. FINI! THE TEMPORAL SHENANIGANS ARC IS OVER

… but not without leaving us some goodies to play with.

Before anyone asks, yes, I am planning a 'season two' of NKS- I already have several stories outlined and the main arc planned. HOWEVER! Now that this... two year long project has reached a major milestone, I am gonna take a break and recharge my batteries.

If you're excited about NKS, I run both a Tumblr and a Discord, both of which I have direction to in my profile here on FF, specifically devoted to the stories.

Thank you all, so much for joining me on this journey. It's been one hell of a ride to write this series, and I look forward to the new arc in season 2 being even more fun than all this timey whimey stuff.

See you all next time, friends and readers.

-Buttlord