Super Jaded (19/23) (Patreon)

Chapter 19: Parents

It was a bright and sunny day, at least, that’s how I remembered it. Even with a superpowered memory working at max capacity, the details of that fateful day were still hazy.

Even though I now knew how it ended, the memory was still shrouded in a haze of fond recollection. It was a memory of my parents and I. Before the sickness. Before the world seemed so complicated. Even a brain as cynical as mine could not help but recall it with fondness as I had no doubt done before.

A pleasant walk through the nearby park, that’s all the day entailed. Thanks to periodic deposits of vast amounts of wealth from my grandpa, we were able to live comfortable lives, which meant my parents spent a good amount of time raising me when they were still around.

With the Black Sun context, more details of the memory fell into place. The park was rather busy, yet the semi-concealed weaponry with that damned insignia struck me like daggers. They had been following us. They had always been following us. From the second we walked into the park.

After a delicious picnic lunch, my parents let me wander around in the woods while they chatted about something likely more important. I kept bothering them about how I wanted to go to grandpa’s house, likely for some silly toy he had that had been on my mind that week, but my parents shooed me off regardless.

Those woods were like an entire separate continent to me at the time. While later in life I was able to fly over the pitiful rectangle of trees in a single second without even breaking the sound barrier, at the impressionable age of eight the sprawling trees spanned infinitely in either direction.

I was always a quiet yet adventurous kid, and my parents wanted to encourage that. While other girls my age may have wanted to play dress-up or host a make-believe tea party, I had always wanted to be a rugged adventurer, exploring the deepest jungles for buried treasure. I suppose I could actually fulfill that childhood wish now if I really wanted to.

I struggled to climb trees and leaped over small creeks as best I could. For a supposed future adventurer, I certainly didn’t have the stamina to be one. But my imagination could project the ten foot tree as a grand, formidable oak, or the six inch wide brooks as dangerous, rushing currents.

But, both a blessing and a curse, my imagination managed to get me lost. Eventually, I tried to jump a rock I wasn’t quite ready for and took a serious bruise to the knee. I cried out for my parents, screaming “MOOOMMY!” and “DAAADDY!” in slow succession until my lungs burned, only adding more agony to my despair.

But thankfully for me, a familiar face would appear, yet one I didn’t expect at all.

“*Sniff* Grandpa?”

“Oh, Nina! Thank goodness I found you! We should get you out of these woods! It’s getting late.”

At the time, I assumed the worry on his face was only over my absence.

I complained about my boo-boo, but he always had a band-aid on hand. He then picked me up and put me on his shoulders. I giggled as I reveled in the heighted perspective as he walked the two of us back to his car.

I was so excited to sit in the front seat of a car for the first time that I didn’t even ask where my parents were. But Grandpa was quick to

“Sorry, Nina. Your parents, they… had to rush out for a business trip and couldn’t get a sitter on such short notice.”

“That’s okay! I wanted to spend today with you anyways!” I said then, unable to even comprehend that something was seriously wrong.

“Good, good,” he responded, brandishing a weary smile. Of course, it only filled me with happiness at the time.

“Are we going to your house, Grandpa!? Are we!?”

“Not yet, Nina. I need to make a quick stop at work first. Is that okay?”

“Okay!”

Even when it was a tense, deadly scenario with a child’s life on the line, he still went out of his way to be as comforting and loving as possible.

It was like… never seeing a friend again after leaving high school. I wasn’t told that was the last time I’d ever see them and I wasn’t one to question why things were happening as they unfolded. It wouldn’t be until much later that I found out they had been killed only minutes after I had wandered into that forest, and only just today did I discover that it was the very government I had served under for ten years responsible for their deaths.

It was only at that moment that my mind began to recontextualize the remainder of that day. Grandpa wasn’t taking me to work just to show me around. He was picking up the serum so that it wouldn’t fall into the government’s hands. The same one he had ensured didn’t exist.

The same government that had killed his daughter and son-in-law after he had worked for them for fifty years, only because he wouldn’t share the details of his personal project that could change the way soldiers fought for oil in foreign countries.

Needless to say, I was ready to fucking nuke them from orbit. It wasn’t hard to steal one from Russia, after all.

All the apathy that once crowded my brain had been replaced with sheer rage.

Within my left hand was the weapon of mass destruction in question. A ten foot tall cylindrical piece of steel that I was casually juggling like a pitcher at a baseball game. Such a device was the closest humanity ever came to reaching godhood. How Ironic was it that a goddess was going to use it to bring about the end?

I was instantly reminded of the ending of Dr. Strangelove. An old movie I didn’t quite understand yet since Fern loved it, I did too. But even I couldn’t deny that the final scene left quite the impact.

A man riding a nuclear bomb like a cowboy as it descended to the ground. A bit too corny for my taste, but I liked the general idea.

Maybe I’d power-bomb the steel container of refined uranium into the capitol building like a wrestler. Or maybe I’d detonate the a-bomb over the white house by shoving the tip into my netherregions and see how long it would take for the metal to contort to the folds and ignite the nuclear prowess within.

This revenge was going to be sweet. I was going to savor every single moment of it. Maybe I’d pleasure myself over the ashes of monuments when it was all over.

The foggy coastline of Eastern America faded into view as the sun arose alongside me. The President of the United States was about to receive one hell of a wake-up call.

But then, my eyes scanned the horizon, locking on to a speck that grew into an all-too-familiar face.

“Nina! Stop this at once!”

It was Fern.

And she was pissed.