Power Core Intermission: Ralph

Ralph had been progressively getting worse at school, receding into a bubble as the bulling effected him more and more. Tom knew this and so decided that his best course of action to kill two birds with one stone was to wake Ralph up before he committed suicide.

After making the surprisingly long bus journey to Ipplepen, Tom made his way to Ralph’s house and knocked on his door after noticing that his parents’ car was missing. When Ralph did not answer, Tom looked up towards his bedroom window to see the curtains drawn and a rope shape hanging from the ceiling. He also saw a boy stood behind it ready to end his life way too early.

Tom quickly formed a small ball of time energy in his hands and fired it at the door as Ralph stepped forwards of the chair that he was stood upon. The door flew backwards and shattered the mirror that hung on the wall behind. Rushing to prevent his friend’s suicide, Tom used his superspeed to rush into the house and up the stairs. Once at the top of the stairs he formed small sharp knife-like objects out of his temporal energy and rushed into Ralph’s room before throwing it straight at the rope, detaching it from the ceiling and allowing Ralph to drop down to the floor.

            “No, no, no!” Ralph stuttered as he stared at the cut rope.

            “Are you insane,” Tom complained as he knelt down next to him and helped to unhook the rope from around his throat.

            “I don’t deserve to be on this planet Tom,” he groaned sadly. “Everyone at school has made that clear. I’m a social misfit who is wrong in every single way.”

            “And what would they do if you were one of the only people who could save them?” Tom smiled. “What if they needed your help? Would you feel like you belonged on this planet then?”

            “Probably,” he shrugged. “But that isn’t going to happen.”

            “But it could,” Tom replied with a smile. “What do you know of the recent alien invasions?”

            “That they attacked and were mysteriously repelled,” Ralph stated simply. “No one knows how but they were all defeated, even though our military had no power over them.”

            “What if I told you that you could be a part of what repels the aliens?” Tom questioned.

            “I would say that you are insane,” Ralph laughed as Tom pulled out his memory device and asked Ralph to look at the end of it. “Why?” he asked uneasily.

            “Because, I am going to give you a reason to ‘deserve’ to be on this Earth,” Tom smiled as Ralph’s eyes focused on the tip of the pen like machine. Tom pressed the button causing a burst of white light to suddenly blind the poor kid.

            “Okay, you really should have started with that, rather than asking me all those questions,” he complained as the sudden wave of old memories returning hit him. “Was there no one better? No one else that you trust?”

            “After Leanne…you were next on my list,” Tom explained. “Almost everyone else is dead now,”

            “How?” he questioned.

            “Freak accidents, bad planning on the militaries part, experiments, and a lot of other stupid things,” Tom explained sadly. “But I can’t change what happened to them, their deaths were set in stone the second the chain of events started…Anyway, on more cheerily news: You want to help me bring Oscar down a beg or two?”

            “Oh most definitely,” Ralph smiled as his depressed state locked itself away in the same space where Ralph had placed the Zoombian mind control damage.