Gone Again is a Fan Fic of Gone by Michael Grant. It has the exact same premise as Gone: All the adults disappear, a dome appears around a twenty-mile radius, and the kids get superpowers. Despite incorporating the same premise and many of the same tropes as Gone, however, it focuses on a completely different group of kids, there's no Gaiaphage, and the adults disappeared for completely different reasons.

The chapters are very, very short (typically between 100 and 800 words), meaning that the author can get a lot to happen very quickly. The fic is divided into several 'books', each spanning fifty chapters exactly. The first book has now been completed, called Disappearance. The second is in progress, and the working title is Control.

The author, gradually, brought a theme out of the story. It's basically an exploration of how horrible violence can be, especially when people who aren't really evil commit it to each other. Throughout the series, we consistently get the POV of both sides of a fight, and we get everyone's reaction to every injury or death - the person being killed, the killer, and the killed person's friends all narrate.

The author started it impulsively one day, and he has no plans for it beyond the next couple chapters. Consequentially, it might not be published if it turns out to suck - even now, he thinks that the plot is rushed and that he's introducing too many characters at once to flesh them out effectively. Nevertheless, he's going to continue writing, just for the hell of it. He just probably won't publish it. However, if you like the looks of it, feel free to give advice on the discussion page.

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Gone Again provides examples of:

A Death in the Limelight: The fist half of Control focuses heavily on Kristopher's character arc, only for him to die halfway through the book.

Aborted Arc: Originally, Charlie was going to be a major villain, but the author couldn't figure out how to make it interesting, so he just had Yasuna kill him. At least he managed to get rid of the character without Dropping a Bridge On Him.

There was mention early on of Grady trying to find adults; he presumably fails, but we never find out.

Bad Powers, Good People/Beware the Nice Ones: Gav. His superpower turns out to be the ability to change how hard or soft an object that he's touching is. This means that he can affect how hard it hurts when he punches you and how much damage it does - if he wants to, he can crush your brain just by patting your head. But he wouldn't do that, because he's actually very nice and sweet. Unless you hit one of his Berserk Buttons, as Cassie learns the hard way.

Badass: Gav, at one point, beats up Cassie, who was guarding the mayor's office, to get to Maria. He lampshades it:

That was the most badass thing I've ever done.

Also, Cady turns out to be pretty badass when she gets into a fight with Rollins.

Belligerent Sexual Tension: Between Will and Paige, until Will gets brain damage and can't recognize faces anymore. That puts a pretty big wedge in it.

Will has been shot in the head and can no longer identify people by looking at them.

Black Dude Dies First: Alex, the first character in the entire series to be killed, was black. The author didn't mention his skin color until after his death, and he didn't realize the Unfortunate Implications until after he wrote it.

Body Horror: Gav punches Rollins so hard in The Control that he swallows one of his own teeth.

Boom, Headshot: Justified; none of the characters are trained gun-users, so they all think it's best to aim for the head. (This usually works out pretty well, since so far, almost all the battles have been very close-range.)

Chekhov's Gun: Jem has a conversation with Will and Paige about whether or not they're carrying guns. It seems insignificant at first, but it becomes important later: Jem was trying to find out whether or not Will and Paige could've forced Kristopher to give up his sisters at gunpoint. They couldn't have, and he didn't.

Also, David's gun, which we see give the Touch of Death to Grady early on, is what makes Alex a zombie.

What would [Will's family] think if they could see what Will looks like right now? What would they think if they saw any of this? Would they want revenge on whoever did this? Or would they see the value in just ending the violence, ending the deaths? I hope, for Willís sake, that they would just want an end to the deaths, an end to stupid revenge. Because whoever did this to Will is an evil person, but shooting him in the face wonít make him any less evil. Itíll just put him through pain, make his family mourn him.

Darker and Edgier: It's a little less dark than the series it's based on, but it's certainly edgier, being more up-front about cursing and sex.

The Control is more of both than The Disappearance.

Deadpan Snarker: Will can go to into it, mainly when talking to Paige. Also, Eve.

Deus Angst Machina: The entire series. In particular, the pileup of really terrible events that happen to the daycare - among them Shelby's death, Cary's death, Jem giving away all of their names except Marco's to David and Kristopher's death - were unrealistically tragic, even for a fan fiction of Gone.

Disability Superpower: Everyone gets their superpowers after an injury of some kind, and some of the injuries can be pretty harmful. For example, Sarah gets her superpower after a baby accidentally set her on fire, Grady and Alex get their superpowers from getting shot with David's gun, and Gav gets his superpower after he crashed his car into the barrier.

Downer Ending: Disappearance has one. Nobody except David get what they want in the least. Here's a sum of all the bad things that happened:

Cady's protesters failed to accomplish anything.

Nick, Shelby, and three of Cady's protesters are dead.

Jem, Yasuna, Tobias, and Cassie are forced to kill all the kids in Grantsville except those that were taken to the daycare.

Jem and David know the names of all the daycare workers except for Marco.

All of the babies in the daycare are dead.

Rollins is about to be forced to kill Gav, Kaelyn, Will, Cary, Sarah, and Paige.

The final daycare kids alive have disappeared; the only person who knows where they are is Kristopher, and he doesn't want anything to do with them.

Dwindling Party: The kids that Kaelyn and the others rescue. They rescue twenty-seven in total, but eight have already died, and there are plans to kill of many, many more.

Ensemble Cast: The closest thing the series has to a main character is David... and he's the Big Bad.

All that talk about the possibility of Kristopher making a Heroic Sacrifice? Really, the author didn't even bother trying to hide his fate.

This trope also comes in not with what is said, but with what isn't - Jem is the only teenager that works for the daycare whose POV we don't get early on, because he's The Mole.

Hell, that reveal was foreshadowed to hell and back with that technique. Jem was the only person left off the list that David gives to Rollins of people to kill.

It got even more foreshadowing when Yasuna mentions that someone was missing from the meet-up of David's workers. Jem was the one missing.

Both of the above reveals get foreshadowed in the same scene, if you know what you're looking at. Jem asks Will and Paige if they had guns. This foreshadows both that Jem is The Mole, and that David suspected that Kristopher was lying.

"Maybe it would just be better to get myself killed by David. Maybe I should just go to him and say, ďI canít do this, just fucking shoot me already.Ē It would certainly save me some time - I feel certain that if he doesnít kill me now, heíll do it later, when he realizes that I couldnít kill Gav.

But no. I have to prolong my life as long as possible. Every time I think of telling David to shoot me, of me getting shot, I know that I canít do it. I have to survive. Thatís my goal. Survival. Iíll do whatever I have to, kill whatever I have to, just to stay alive. Does that make me an evil person? Maybe. But itís what I have to do. Certainly, what Iím doing is wrong, but it doesnít matter, because I donít have a choice, not really. The right thing to do would be to make some heroic sacrifice and let myself get killed rather than kill people, but who would honestly do that? What person would honestly let themselves get killed? Nobody, thatís who. Only a suicidally depressed person would choose death, no matter how horrible the alternative is."

Heroic Sacrifice: Kristopher is in a position where he might have to die in order to protect his sisters, and he's pretty nervous about it.

Thereís just no way [David] will be okay with this. I want to be loyal to him; it might be the only way to stay alive. But I canít get my sisters killed for that - thatís all there is to it.

And this is the alternative. The alternative to getting my sisters killed might be to get myself killed.

Iím not sure if Iím okay with that. I mean, everybody thinks that theyíll be able to sacrifice themselves for the people they love, but nobody ever has to actually do it. And now that Iím in that situation, Iím not sure if I can. I once heard a comedian say something like, Thereís no one worth dying for, because then youíre dead, and you canít know if it was actually worth it or not. Itís like throwing a million dollars on the sidewalk and hoping someone that works for a charity will pick it up.Ē The guy might be right - if David kills me, that doesnít necessarily mean Sloane and Maddy will make it out alive. Maybe if I knew for sure that they would, Iíd be willing to go through with this. But without that certaintyÖ

In the end, Kristopher has to go through with the sacrifice, but he manages to save his sisters, at least for now.

Infant Immortality: Averted, oh so much. Kids constantly die in the series, and David's friends successfully kill fifty-one of the seventy young kids in Grantsville.

Instant Death Bullet: To some extent. In this universe, you can be shot without dying - just ask Will - but a direct shot to the head with cause an instant death.

Kill 'em All: The author's intent for the ending. Or maybe just the entire thing.

Kudzu Plot: The plot introduced several narrators and sub-plots at once, some of which don't interact with each other at all. The author also admits that whenever he doesn't know where to take his current plots, he just adds a new one to give himself more time to think.

Laser-Guided Amnesia: Averted when Will gets shot in the head. He still has all his memories, but he has... other mental problems.

Oh, and X Dies: Inverted; in something similar to what K. A. Applegate did in Remnants, the author has said that he'll do his best to keep Hazel alive, although he can't promise anything. He's also given tentative immortality to three other characters, and marked a bunch of characters that he knows are going to die.

It's down to two people with tenative immortality; the third already died.

Oh Crap!: When Jason wakes up to realize that David has him trapped in his basement.

Power Glows: Everyone glows when they use their power, and the way they glow depends on the power. So, for example, Grady can disintegrate things with his hand, so he glows black. The baby that Jem kills shoots fireballs, so she glows red.

Power Palms: Played straight with Grady, averted with everyone else. It's justified in Grady's case - he got his powers when he got shot from David's gun, and David shot him in the arm.

Random Events Plot: The author has no idea what he's doing. He's just throwing out new plots for the hell of it to see if he can tie everything together. He's doing far better than he expected, all things considered.

The Reveal: David has two personalities, apparently, in something the author has yet to explain. Because he doesn't know why it happened.

David knew that Kristopher was lying about being forced to give up Maddy and Sloane the entire time.

Will got brain damage from when Rollins shot him in the head.

Shoot Everything That Moves: A battle in which this is the only option occurs at the end of Disappearance. The mayor's hall is complete chaos, with protesters, David's workers, and little kids mixed in - nobody can see who they're targeting, they just have to shoot.

Shoot the Dog: The series gets quite a few moments; virtually every death in the series was done to someone that was completely unprepared to stop it.

David and Jem killing the babies in the daycare.

Yasuna, Tobias, Jem, and Cassie killing the kids that David had captured.

The author does one to Michael Grant himself by naming the town they live in Grantsville.

Kristopher, at one point, quotes a phrase he said he heard from a comedian. It does actually derive from something that was said on A Dose Of Buckley, although the author altered it a lot to suit his needs.

I once heard a comedian say something like, ďThereís no one worth dying for, because then youíre dead, and you canít know if it was actually worth it or not. Itís like throwing a million dollars on the sidewalk and hoping someone that works for a charity will pick it up.Ē

I shoot Shelby in the head. She collapses, dead, before she even figures out whatís going on.

What Happened to the Mouse?: At one point, the author forgot that Jem was with Kaelyn, Sarah, and Cary, so he had to sort of retcon Jem into having walked off with Kaelyn.

Would Hit a Girl: Surprisingly, not David this time. No, this time, we're talking about Gav, of all people, who beats up Cassie to get into the Mayor's Hall. And he doesn't even give it a second thought.

Would Hurt a Child: Kaelyn, Sarah, Cary, and Jem all struggle with the fact that they have to kill a baby that was shooting fireballs at them uncontrollably. Well, it turns out Jem didn't mind it too much, but the others did.

David shoots Alex in the head. Twice. In front of a large crowd of people.

Writers Cannot Do Math: The author went to great lengths to avert this. He's not very good at math, but he still wanted to keep track of Grantsville's population so that he didn't write too many or too few people after he (accidentally) wrote the town to have a population of 151 people. As a result, there are only ten people in each age group (except the fourteen year-olds; they have eleven).

Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: invoked The author started it impulsively one day because he had finished his assignments in his creative writing class early. He has no idea what's going to happen next, no answers to any of the mysteries, and no plans at all, other than an extremely rough synopsis of who's going to make it to the end of the series and who won't. (And he's already broken that synopsis more than once, so there really are no plans.)

The Character Sheet

David's Workers

David

The current leader of Grantsville, he is a sociopath who enjoys killing.

Shoot the Shaggy Dog: His goal throughout the series is to ensure the safety of his little sisters without David finding out. He manages to save his sisters, for the time being anyway, but David knew what was going on pretty much from the beginning, and Kristopher got shot for it.

Yasuna

She's another one of David's workers, who justifies what she does by the fact that she has a crush on him.

Flanderization: Her love for David became very exaggerated starting The Control.

Kick the Dog: When she stabs Cassie in the neck to prevent her from stopping her from capturing Charlie.

Grady

Grady is one of the few boys in David's class that didn't ally himself with David. He gained the Touch of Death power early on, and since then, he joined up with the protesters to try to throw David out of power.

Informed Attribute: We didn't find out that he was one of the protesters until after their major battle in The Disappearance; we don't know if he was actually part of it or not.

Touch of Death: His superpower - his right hand (and only the right hand) can disintegrate anything it touches.

Everyone Else

Gav Wills

Gav was the first narrator of the series, who crashed his car into the barrier. He then rescued Alex and Maria, and after Alex was shot by David, he dedicated himself to protecting Maria.

Bad Powers, Good People/Beware the Nice Ones: His superpower turns out to be the ability to change how hard or soft an object that he's touching is. This means that he can affect how hard it hurts when he punches you and how much damage it does - if he wants to, he can crush your brain just by patting your head. But he wouldn't do that, because he's actually very nice and sweet. Unless you hit one of his Berserk Buttons, as Cassie learns the hard way.

Badass: At one point, he beats up Cassie, who was guarding the mayor's office, to get to Maria. He lampshades it:

That was the most badass thing I've ever done.

Berserk Button: Anything involving a threat towards Maria. The mere implication that he may not be able to rescue her is enough to beat up Cassie and discover his superpower.

Curb-Stomp Battle: Any fight that he gets into ends up being one of these, due to his power.

Demoted to Extra: In The Control, although the author plans on restarting his role in book 3.

Kick the Dog: When he punches a severely traumatized Rollins so hard that he swallows one of his own teeth.

Maria

Little Miss Badass: Subverted. She sneaks out to kill David, and at first, it looks like she might succeed. Turns out she has no idea what she's doing, and the only result of her attempts was getting her nose broken.

Unexplained Recovery: After David shoots her in the stomach, the injury disappears with no explanation.

Eve

Demoted to Extra: She was never all that important, but she stops appearing entirely in The Control.

Plot summaries (with spoilers unmarked)

The summaries go chapter by chapter, with a new paragraph break for each new chapter.

The Disappearance

The book opens with Gav driving directly into a wall that suddenly appears in front of him. His mom was in the seat beside him; she's gone now, and he doesn't know what happened to her. He sees another car where the adults disappeared, with two little kids (Alex and Maria) inside it. He takes them with him to go back to town. Meanwhile, at school, there's chaos. David quickly goes home, brings a gun, and declares himself in charge until the adults return. Grady resists him, so David shoots him in the arm.Grady discovers that he can disintegrate anything he touches... but only with the arm that was shot by David's gun. David calls a meeting in the gym for all the kids that show up. Gav, Maria, and Alex make it back to town while the meeting is still in progress. David shootsAlexin the head, killing him. This naturally outrages the other kids, but David basically explains that since he has a gun, there's nothing they can do about it. He wants to kill all the kids under the age of six, because they can't work to make food. This inspires Kaelyn to take her brother, Aubrey, and anyone else she can find to make a daycare to protect the kids. Meanwhile, Maria makes plans to get revenge on David for killing Alex. That night, Tobias and Nick, two of David's friends, go back to the gym to dispose of Alex's body. But he turns out not to be entirely dead... and he can disintegrate your skin by touching it. Tobias and Nick flee in a panic. Meanwhile, Maria sneaks into David's room (in the Mayor's Hall) and tries to stab him with a butter knife. It doesn't work - he just wakes up. David starts to beat her up. He probably would've killed her, if Nick hadn't come into David's room to tell him about Alex. Meanwhile, Kaelyn has recruited plenty of others to get kids for the daycare, including Will, Cary, Jem, and Sarah. A baby that Sarah is holding starts shooting fireballs uncontrollably, almost killing them. Nick begins to take David to Alex. Will and a girl he recruited, Paige, are looking for kids when Nick, David, and Tobias come down the street, following Alex. Will and Paige hide as David discovers that shooting Alex results in nothing happening. Will and Paige decide to regroup with Kaelyn and the others. Gav notices that Maria is missing and he tracks her to the Mayor's Hall. He asks Cassie where she is, but instead of being helpful, Cassie decides to pull a knife on him, as per David's orders. Kaelyn, Jem, Sarah, and Cary decide that they have to kill the baby that was Playing with Fire - Jem is the one to stab it. Will and Paige then come back. They all decide to go into separate groups - Sarah and Cary take the kids they already have to the lake, and the others go to find more kids. David realizes that every time he shoots Alex, his black glow gets stronger. So he and Nick put on gloves (to avoid the Touch of Death) and drag him back to town. Gav beats up Cassie to figure out where David sleeps. Cary gets all the kids into a car and starts to drive to the lake. David and Nick lock Alex in a room, but Alex breaks free with his Touch of Death. Will and Paige recruit Kristopher's sisters, Maddy and Sloane. Kristopher works for David, so he makes them promise not to tell David what happened. Gav rescues Maria and takes her back to his house. Cary and Sarah discover that the lake is outside the barrier. A little kid named Connor touches the barrier and dies. David stabs Alex with a knife, and he actually does die this time. David tells Tobias and Nick to take Alex away. Kristopher tells David that Will and Paige forced him to give up Maddy and Sloane at gunpoint (which is a lie). David tells him that he already knew Will and Paige were taking kids, which makes Kristopher nervous about Maddy and Sloane's fate. David sees Cassie with a black eye, and asks what happens. After Cassie gives her explanation, David swears to go to Gav's house and kill both him and Maria. Grady sees Tobias and Nick dragging Alex across the street. When they explain why, Grady gets scared that David will kill him if he reveals his superpower. Sarah and Cary take the kids away from the barrier and wait for the others to show up. Cary angsts a bit about a nonspecific topic, and Sarah discovers that her hair is a Living Battery. Hazel is lying in her bed when her father comes in, despite her father having disappeared with the other adults, and he molests her. David goes to Gav's house, and shoots Maria in the stomach. Gav punches him in the face so hard that he retreats. Tobias and Nick successfully dispose of Alex's body against the barrier. Will, Paige, and a new recruit named Marco briefly regroup with Kaelyn and Jem. The former three decide to go back to the camp. David gives Rollins a list of people that he wants killed, including Will, Paige, Kaelyn, Gav, Cary, and Sarah. Gav fixes Maria up and puts her to bed. Jem and Kaelyn show up where Sarah and Cary are waiting with more kids; they all walk to a campsite together. David goes home and reveals two things to the reader: his father knew the border would appear before it happened, and David has multiple personalities: an evil one and a good one. Hazel decides not to tell anyone that she saw her father last night. Everybody finally sets up the daycare at a campsite. Marco and Sarah get the first watch; Will and Paige walk home together. David's friends all regroup; they all go on a mission to take everyone's food and little kids. Tobias searches Eve's house. Nick takes Fisher's little sister away. Jobs comes to Fisher asking if he wants revenge, but Fisher turns out to be too young to join Fisher's rebellion. Marco and Sarah feed the kids. They give one of them peanut butter, and she has an allergic reaction and dies. Rollins reports to David a bunch of people meeting in a basement. Cady is leading a bunch of protesters to try to save the kids that David's friends captured. Isabelle, a little kid, was captured by David and thrown into the basement of the Mayor's Hall. But an explosion breaks down the door, and she escapes. It's Jem and Shelby's watch at the daycare. Jem shoots Shelby in the head, revealing him to be The Mole. He and David shoot all the babies in the daycare. However, when they go to shoot the older kids, they all disappear. The protesters arrive at the Mayor's Hall and go inside to rescue the kids. David's friends fight back. The kids had already escaped, due to the explosion, creating chaos as everyone tried not to shoot the people on their own side. In the end, an explosion knocks out everyone in the room. Nick is blown across the room; he lands on his neck, which kills him. David and Jem look around for the kids, but they're nowhere to be found. They decide to head back to town. David and Jem return to the Mayor's Hall to find Nick dead and everybody else injured. Everybody except for the kids are herded out, and the kids are killed. It turns out that all the kids that disappeared from the daycare had been teleported by Stella to her older brother, Gerard's house. Kristopher finds them there and vows to save them. Grady, who had become one of the protesters, goes into Hazel's house so that David can't find him. He starts to show an interest in Hazel, but she tells him to back off. The end.

The Control

Rollins reluctantly prepares to kill the people on the list that David gave him. Tobias swears to get revenge on David for Nick's death. Cady and her protesters regroup after their crushing loss against David. They make plans to make him surrender that night, and to kill him if he doesn't. Kristopher walks to Paige's house and tells her where the kids are. Hazel wakes up to find out that Grady has left. Cassie, Tobias, and Jem deliver breakfast to everybody in Grantsville. Rollins goes to Will's house and shoots him in the head. Paige and Kristopher walk to Will's house and see his unconscious body. They take him inside and tend to his injuries. Kaelyn walks to the daycare for her shift to take care of the kids, only to find Shelby and the babies dead, with everyone else missing. Rollins goes to Gav's house with the intention to shoot him; Gav punches him in the face so hard that he swallows one of his own teeth.Kristopher gets Sarah, and she takes the kids from Gerard's house to the empty house next door. Charlie, the kid who caused the explosions in the Mayor's Hall, wonders whether or not his mom is alive. Kaelyn shows up at Will's house. The two of them leave Will and walk to Gerard's house. David shows up at Kristopher's house and tells him that he knew that he had given up Maddy and Sloane involuntarily the entire time. Kristopher tries to explain, but David shoots him in the head, killing him. Grady, restless before the attack on David with the protesters, goes to Hazel's house to hang out. She doesn't want to hang out, but she helps him after she accidentally closes a door on his fingers. Rollins picks himself up from Gav's doorstep and goes to Cary's house. Paige and Kaelyn meet Sarah at the house where she took the kids. Jem finds out about Kristopher's death and blames himself for it. Yasuna and Cassie discover Charlie hiding in his house. Yasuna is in favor of killing him, especially after he causes an explosion with his hands, but Cassie is dead-set against it, not wanting to kill any more kids. So, Yasuna stabs Cassie in the neck and takes Charlie anyway. Cary decides to make a concious effort to be strong and move past his mother's death. Then, he hears a knock at the door. It's Rollins, who killshim. Paige sees Jem kneeling over Kristopher's body. Jem tells her that he was The Mole, alerting Paige that one of David's friends was on the way to kill her and her friends. She punches Jem in the face in anger. Will wakes up, and is in immense pain. Yasuna takes Charlie and Cassie to David's house, David orders Yasuna to kill Charlie, which she does. The two then eat lunch together. Exhausted, Rollins goes to Tobias's house. Together, the two agree to find a way to get revenge on David. Paige goes back to the daycare and informs Sarah and Kaelyn that they have to stay inside the house for the time being. They agree to have Marco get the kids food from the campsite, and to then get Will. Bonnie, a protester who had lost her little brother in the attacks, prepares to fight David.

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