Crossover Fan Fiction ❯ Valley Quest ❯ Valley Quest: 9 ( Chapter 9 )

“Hey, Komachi-san, have you seen any of the Masaki ladies recently? I can’t get them on the phone. Says no such number. And I drove past their road and I swear its dirt now. It used to be paved. And the village at the crossroad seems like there’s a bunch of houses closed up for some reason, like they’re just not occupied,” asked Takanagi Jun, one of my regulars, a farmer.

“That’s really odd. Like magically odd. I’ll try calling them. Sasami-san left me a special radio phone to reach them,” I said, finishing ringing up my customer. The next man stepped up to pay for his order and Takanagi-san waved goodbye. Now he mentioned it, there were a lot more boards up on the street outside that used to be shops a week ago. And the weird part is I hadn’t noticed it until he mentioned it. When the morning rush ended and the sun got brighter I stepped out and looked up and down the street. Five shops which had been struggling but opened were boarded up and just… like they’ve never been opened. The boards were old. And the computer network shop across the street that Lain ran was just gone. I checked my phone. Signal was back to crap, just weak wifi, no more 5G signal. This was magical, but why didn’t I feel it. I tested the mana… and it was really weak, like barely there. I went back into my shop and dug under the counter, then checked the drawers near my desk. The shortcut on my computer for the Washu network was a blank spot, file type unknown. The port was closed, the network timed out. The communicator was entirely missing. The crab phone was distinctive, like a kids toy, but it was just gone. I locked my door and stepped out again. I started walking down the street and noticed more businesses were gone. Several of the previously occupied homes were falling down shacks again, no longer cared for. Many of the fields were fallow and empty. Even as I looked around I saw the glassblower’s town waver in the air and just vanish from one moment to the next.

I took a deep breath and considered. The magic was weak. The mana was going away. I can’t risk flight. It’s the Gate. The Gate is closing, and we’ve lost our Nexus somehow. We screwed up. Whatever allowed this place to be a crossover point between realities has broken and things are snapping back to their original universe, the overlap we’d enjoyed was gone.

Even as I looked more shops vanished, replaced by boarded up fronts. I started to run. Yuki! Taishi! I managed to get in the door of Taishi’s financial services shop and grab Yuki from his rocker before I found the three of us standing in a shack smelling dust and decay. I checked my boy and found he was okay. He started to cry and Taishi looked at me, opened his mouth to speak.

“Huh. I did not see that coming,” he said. “You did, apparently. What has happened, love?”

“I think the Gate has closed,” I said. “Is your safe still there?” I asked him. He looked. Shook his head.

“Gone like the furniture.” We wedged open the back door and escaped the ruined building. Outside the town had returned to a semi-ghost town, like one of those American West mining towns where the gold ran out and everybody just moved, leaving piles of junk behind.

We staggered down the street to where my shop had been. More boards. My car was outside. The keys still worked. We drove out of town to a better view point, seeing the town was pretty much how we’d found it when we first arrived. My fortune was gone with the safe. I turned on the radio and heard the news about the vanished Gate.

End Part 2