The Journey for Paper (Cleansing the Earth)

[Jams Bolero]

Jams' vision, once filled with colorful and natural wonder, had been replaced by a drab wasteland.  Gray ashes blanketed about half of a mile of former forestry, the charred remains of trees scattered about the area as they rested on their sides.  The sky, now finally in clear view, was a light overcast with the clouds poking out the bottom like hilly terrain.  This made Jams feel slightly better as he always loved overcast, though it did make the scene feel all the more depressing.  Some of the embers had been carried into the air, clouding the area in a sort of black fog that made seeing more of a challenge.  Eventually, the dust settled, some of which onto the leaves of bordering trees.  It's likely that this stunted their growth, as the trees along the edges of the scorched surroundings were quite shorter than those behind them, and they less than those behind them.  It was as if someone had reenacted the great Pompeii disaster in miniature.  He inhaled the airborne soot and coughed violently; the air in tasted and smelled like rotten eggs, the pungent stench of sulfur making this burnt patch of the woods feel like he was standing atop the brimstone of Satan's realm itself.

"Eugh!" Jams shouted in disgust, his tongue sticking out as he yelled, "This is simply appalling.  Whoever did this should be ashamed.  A.  SHAMED.  For this blatant waste of life."  Jams never really got as offended as he showed, even when it was warranted, and certainly not now.  Upon reflecting, Jams realized that he wasn't really as angry as he thought he was, in fact he didn't feel anything.  This bothered him, as it felt like he used to do this kind of thing where he faked his fury, but he wondered why that was.  His thoughts transferred to Have I ever actually gotten offended or mad before?, his right hand pointing left as it rested on his chin while he thought.  Well, there was that one time-

Huh?  Where'd it go?  The memory was right there a second ago-  *sniff* *COUGH WHEEZE*

Whatever it was, Jams lost whatever train of thought he had.  No matter, the ashen terrain forced another memory to resurface.  A memory of him and some companions in a volcano, preparing to engage in a battle.  The opponent was a dragon, obviously, but there was something unique, something sly, something... unnatural that they could not have realistically prepared for or anticipated.  Unfortunately, Jams couldn't remember it for the life of him, nor could he remember the names of two of the companions.  He did notice that the "K" girl from earlier was a part of the team... Kelly, that was her name!  Physical details were forgotten, but she really liked pigs apparently.  Whatever the case, Jams and those three companions had teamed up to battle a dragon in what he was absolutely positive was their first major fight with anyone or anything.

The boy broke out his clamshell and flicked it open with a push of the thumb and the jerk of his arm.  Chances are he habitually did this before the Omniverse, seeing as he realized that there was literally no reason for him to open his phone at the moment.  He did notice that the time looked like it ate a few AWAKE bars, the equivalent of 3-4 average cups o' joe.  It was set to automatically adjust to the local timezone, but considering the weird Omnitime mechanics that Jams didn't know of at the time, it was spinning so fast it looked like it was counting milliseconds instead of minutes. Quite disconcerted, Jams smacked his phone on its side out of schadenfreude rather than trying to do anything.  It did do something, however, and Jams swore to Omni that he's decipher the secrets to Omnispacetime just so he could get his phone's clock to stop reading "∞∞:∞∞".