Here is another one-shot for you to munch on while I work on my bigger projects. This one is my very belated Halloween prompt which called for the writers to switch the bodies of the ElGang. I know it's December now, but hey, better late than never! I decided on only one to get switched around, so enjoy the... Well, you'll see...
It was just another normal day in Elrios freed from the demon invasion. Birds flitted about, singing dulcet songs. Phorus of all age and sizes ran here and there scrounging for anything edible. Yes, just another normal day.
That is until a sizzling line of electric blue carved through the air and split open a gaping void. Air rushed around the gap in space and the animals nearby fled in every direction. Not much later, a faint sound could be heard from the hole, and it sounded like a scream.
Louder and louder it grew until a red headed boy unceremoniously landed on the grass beneath with his face. Apparently he was the one screaming. But, more screams could be heard above and soon another person fell out of the portal, this one a young girl with violet hair. And she ended up landing right on top of him, to his misfortune, but on her butt to her fortune.
"Ow! Watch it, grapehead!" the boy shouted.
"Well excuse me, tomatohead! I am not used to this whole interdimensional travelling thing yet!" she yelled back.
But before they could continue, another voice rang from the hole. "Watch out!" The girl twitched and scrambled to escape, but yet another individual, this one an elf fell out.
The girl was greeted with the thing she desired most but could never have in her face, and the additional weight squeezed a painful "Oof" from the boy. "Aisha! Elsword! Are you both okay!? I'm so so-"
"Heads up, Rena!" Unfortunately the warning came too late and a man with a mechanical arm ended up falling right on top of the trio, and the boy let out a pained yelp.
"Ow, thanks for at least not landing on me with your arm," Rena whimpered and then her eyes snapped open. "Wait, Raven who was behind you?"
Raven's eyes widened in realization. "Oh shit… That was-"
"Incoming…" a monotone voice announced just before a silver haired girl fell out. Despite her small size, a distinct heavy thud could be heard from when she landed on the ever-growing pile of bodies.
"Eve…" Raven groaned, finishing his statement late. Apparently she was quite heavy.
"I advise that we vacate immediately, Chung is upon us," she stated, but didn't really bother to move. A muffled "What!?" could be heard from the bottom of the pile.
But alas, none could escape the armored boy, or his cannon, as they dropped out of the portal and onto the pile of bodies. "I am sorry, everyone! Are you all okay!?" the boy cried and got a chorus of pained groans in response. "I'll get off immediately! Let me just-"
"Look out!" Just as the boy started shifting off the gang, yet another person fell from the hole in the air. A comet of orange, black and gold slammed into the young man and threw him back on top of everyone else, earning the culprit yet another chorus of moans and shouts.
"Miss Ara… Are you okay?" Chung groaned and the girl looked at him frantically.
"Yes, I am fine! But we must move before-"
"Cowabungaaaaaa!" As if to give voice to Ara's warning, a cheery cry erupted from the portal as another red head, this one a young woman, came flying out and settled herself on top of dog pile heavily.
"Woohoo! That was fun, wasn't it Els?" She asked the boy on the bottom, who was too engrossed in the ground to answer. The woman got to her feet and stood proudly on the top, looking over the forest clearing.
"Ah, nothing like a nice forest breeze after a run in betwe-"
"Make way! Make way!" The female knight had only a moment of confusion before she was knocked over and pinned by not one, but two bodies. One was a young man with blue hair and the other a small girl with hair as white as snow.
Finally, the portal closed and peace once again settled on the forest. Except now there was a pile of bodies in the middle of it.
"Lu… Ciel… Can you please move?" the elf pleaded weakly as the mage beneath her let out a small moan of suffering.
"The queen must always stand above her subjects," the little girl declared, but then a gloved hand shot out and snatched her pointed ear. "Owowowowowow!"
"Queens do not try to suffocate their subjects, Lu. Let's get off," the man calmly interjected and pulled himself and his queen off the pile. After several minutes of pained yelps, groans and shifting, everyone was finally relieved of one another's weight, but Elsword remained where he lay. Everyone was sure he was fine, though.
"Sometimes, I think Glave does that on purpose to mess with us…" Aisha panted, earning her several nods from the rest of the group.
"Wouldn't be surprised. How else would he get his kicks?" Raven grumbled, causing Rena to tilt her head curiously.
"You know, now that I think about it, does he even get out? Like, does he ever get to leave that space?" Her face then slowly fell. "Can he leave?"
The question hung almost as heavy as the pile of bodies from before, and everyone hung their heads silently. But then another question rose.
"Wait, where is Add?"
"What the fuck do you want?" Add was not thrilled. Not only did he have to fight through a bunch of alternate versions of enemies he had previously encountered in a place in between dimensions, but now he couldn't leave. Everyone else, Eve included, got to leave, but he couldn't. And that's not saying that he didn't try to leave. Of course he tried, but something was keeping him here.
And he had a strong inkling it had to do with that steel mask freak tossing dice just a few paces from him. A single eye of brilliant gold gazed from the mask's only opening, like a searchlight spotting a fugitive.
"Hm… What do I want…?" the masked being mused, pacing back and forth, tossing the blue dice in his hands like a couple of poker ships. "Well, I was hoping you could help me, Add."
The Diabolic Esper scowled. "Help you? Why the fuck would I help you with anything? Besides, I'm not going to go to the fucking supermarket to get you some candy if that's what you're going to ask."
But to his surprise, and annoyance, Glave chuckled. "No no. It is something you are uniquely suited for." Add didn't like his tone one bit. He sounded like he was a swindler ready to cheat some poor sap.
But he was not a sap. "Well, that's too fucking bad. I have more important things to do than entertain some bored, masked freak. Now, get me out of here," he growled, his dynamos twitching dangerously behind him.
"Or what? You'll kill me? Who was it that gave you those powers?" Glave scoffed, snatching the dice in midair and clenched his hand into a fist. "I'm afraid this is non-negotiable. Now I can just take this favor without you knowing what's going on, or I can enlighten you beforehand. Your call, boy…"
Add's eyes narrowed and his sclera began to darken at the unspoken threat, but he remained silent. Glave took it as his cue to continue. "When I helped you ascend to this power, I did not expect anything to really come of it. You were only human after all, so it was more of me getting some entertainment value out of you."
Add's mouth twisted into a scowl and his eyes darkened even further. "Get to the fucking point," he demanded.
"Well, there were some… unforeseen results of your actions. Nothing to the scale of breaking the space time continuum or anything but…" At this, Glave opened the palm of his clenched fist to reveal a network of electric blue lines, circles and dots. "Before I continue, do you know what this is?"
Add scrutinized the object in his hand for a good ten seconds before shooting Glave a glare. "Should I?"
"Not surprising you don't. Your abilities only go knee deep. This is you, or rather your existence." Add's eyes sprang wide open and the blackness in his eyes receded. "This is the very fabric of your being. Every experience, every decision, everything that makes you who you are is all here."
Add stared at the thing in silence before swallowing hard. "So, what does it matter if you can see it? You trying to blackmail me?"
Glave snickered. "Far from it, boy. I'll let you in on a little secret." He leaned forward and Add could have sworn he was sneering behind that mask. "As the Administrator of Henir's Space and Time, I have a limited ability to modify codes of existence within this space. Think of it as how you alter codes on your computer."
Add inhaled sharply. Was he going to…?
"However, my powers are limited to weak anchors. An anchor essentially prevents a code from being modified. It is an established existence, so to alter it would be to alter the reality surrounding it, which is far beyond what I am capable of. Now there are intervention measures this place can take, but…" Did he just say this place can take? Was he talking about Henir's Space and Time? "For the most part, we cannot interfere with the codes of other beings because they are too deeply rooted in their reality."
Add gulped. "So then, why show me my own code? You can't do anything to it anyways." Why was his voice shaking? Was he… afraid?
"Because your code is… unique." Add did not like the way he said unique. Like it was a very bad thing. "You see, your powers to alter time and space itself has an effect on anchors. To alter such things, you need to be able to break them so that they can be modified. You do it very well. So well in fact that…" He raised the swirling pattern of code in his hands. "It even breaks your own."
So his initial fear was realized. "What the fuck are you going to do!?" Add shouted, taking a step forward, some basal hope praying it would intimidate the steel mask.
However, Glave just chuckled. "I am bored, you see. I am bored of this place. I want to peek at the world outside. All of them. And you're going to help me do that." At that he began to twirl the code in his hand. "I just have to make an adjustment here…" He tapped the glowing network with his occupied index finger while his remaining hand was folded behind his back.
"Don't you fucking da-" Add made a move to lurch forward and snatch his existence away from the administrator, but as soon as Glave touched it, he felt an overwhelming sense of weakness, and he fell to the floor. It wasn't just in his body, it was also in his mind; his very being. He felt like gravity had failed where he stood, but his physical body was strapped to the floor, allowing his soul to float up and away. But he endured; he focused on his body as hard as he could and it didn't get any worse, but he still couldn't move.
Glave was either too engrossed in the code in his hand, or he didn't care for the boy's struggles, because he continued tapping it, now bringing his other hand to actually shift some of the patterns. "And this can go here… That goes there…" Each time he touched it, Add felt that same sensation of floating away, but now he was noticing something odd about his body.
It was flickering. Like some second hand monitor. He tried to speak, but his voice was lost in his throat.
Eventually, Glave ceased his probing on his code. "Aaaaaand, that should do it. Now for the last bit..." he said, a hint of small anticipation in his voice. He then curled his fingers on his free hand and from his palm sprang forth another code.
His golden eye making contact with Add's confused pink irises prompted him to explain. "Now this is my existence. Despite it being deeply rooted in this place, I know how I can make this work."
Make this work? Add thought to himself. What is he planning? Wait, is he going to-
"You see, the reason I cannot adjust my own existence is because this space requires an administrator at all times. So, I can't leave, but…" He twirled Add's code in his hand. "As long as there is an administrator, one can come and go as they please."
Add's eyes widened in shock. It all made sense now; the modification of his code, bringing out Glave's code, and then explaining the rules of the dimension.
Glave's chuckling grew to a low laugh. "I see you finally understand. You have been… volunteered to be the Henir's Time and Space administrator, while I will be taking leave… as you." At this, he clapped his hands, smashing the two existences together.
If Glave toying with his reality made him feel weightless in being, this made him feel like he was being seized by a giant hand and pulled away. And he could do nothing, but let out a silent scream that none but he could hear as he was pulled away, his body left behind.
He could not see, he could not hear. Not even smell or taste. It made sense, he had no body. But he could still feel something: fear.
What was happening to him? He felt like he was being ripped apart, but it didn't hurt. It was just a sensation of being pulled apart on some level.
He didn't like it. Hell, he feared this feeling, and he wanted it to stop. It was perverse, it was terrifying. He just wanted it to stop, and stop soon.
Eventually it did, but now a new sensation took over. It was as if he were being put back together again, but all wrong. He couldn't describe how it was wrong, it just felt like the pieces of his conscious were being put in all the wrong places.
Finally, began to feel again. Feet on the floor, the weight of clothes on his shoulders, and something resting on his face. Wait, he didn't have anything on his face.
Finding control of his body once more, he opened his eyes. Or rather, his eye.
Wait, why did he have only one eye? And what was with this weight on his shoulders?
He brought a hand to his face, and heard the most bizarre sound: the clinking of chains. Hearing that sound, his mind spun with possibilities and settled on a conclusion. But it didn't help him accept what he saw.
It wasn't his hand. His hands were clothed in black, not white. And he did not wear a trench coat laced with chains, he thought they were tacky for starters.
And he certainly did not wear a mask of steel.
But he did have a mouth, or at least he thought he did. "What did you do to me!?" he screamed. It sounded like his voice in his head, but the echoes in the empty space were certainly different.
"I have to say, it's nice to have the weight of those chains lifted," a voice rang. Add looked to its source, and his mind froze.
It was him, as if he were looking in a mirror. But there was no mirror. And his body was inspecting itself as though it had never seen its reflection before.
"I feel … light… This must be what freedom feels like. No shackles holding me down." He then looked to him. "I must thank you, Add. You made this possible. If not for you, I would have never been granted this opportunity."
Add took a clanking step forward. "You bastard! If you could pull that shit in this body, then I can, too!" He opened his palm just as Glave had done and then…
Wait, what does he do now?
Glave, in Add's body, snorted. "You idiot. You don't even know how to use the abilities I commanded as the administrator. Not that I would worry even you could…"
At this, a sound akin to perhaps the biggest fog horn known to man blared throughout the space and the space became tinted in red.
"What the fuck is it now!?" Add, in Glave's body, cried out.
"This place is like a giant computer system, Add. Didn't I tell you that when I helped you gain your powers?" Glave – no, Add – whatever he should be called explained. "As such, it possesses its own modes of, how should I say it, anomaly detection."
The horn blared again, and the red glow deepened. "You see, it has detected that the administrator is… somewhat different. And it means to correct that."
Add – no, Glave – whatever he should be called gasped. "Correct? What do you mean by correct?" He hoped it wasn't what he thought it was, because what he was thinking about was something that any anti-virus system he worked with would do: deletion.
"Don't worry, it won't wipe you or anything. The system is far too smart for such a bludgeoning approach," Glave reassured him. "Every moment, it records and archives changes in the system. That is how it is able to detect severe anomalies. It compares each change to the point before, and when something big like this happens, it sets a restore point."
Add felt his blood run cold. He knew what that meant. It was akin to a reset, effectively reverting the system to a point before.
A point where he didn't exist anymore.
"Fuck you! You knew this would happen!" he cursed.
Glave shrugged. "I did. What does it matter to me? Nothing. I got what I wanted. What happens to you is not my concern. The system will replace your existence with a copy of mine prior to the switch. You on the hand…" He smiled. "Well, we both know where that leads. Farewell, Add."
He spun on his heel and held out a hand, a rift tearing open, just like Add did so many times before. And as he stepped through the boundary, Add sprinted forward, hand outstretched. "Come back here! I'll kill you, you fucker! Get back here!"
But he never reached him. Three steps in he saw nothing but darkness. The floor beneath him was gone, and the space was completely empty.
"What the fuck? Where am I?" Lady El, his voice was shaking worse than that magician brat in Feita.
Then, a faint glow caught his eye, just below him. He turned to look and felt his breath hitch.
It almost looked like the corpse of a star. A broken sphere of unknown material with a weak glow within its core. Was this the center of Henir's Time and Space?
ANOMALY ISOLATED… EXECUTING RESTORATION…
The disembodied voice made him jump, but the sudden lighting of the sphere sent lightning bolts down his spine.
It flared with sinister blue and white light. A sound like that of a broken horn blared and linear lines of electric sapphire shot from the core.
"No! Stay away from me!" He turned to run, but there was nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide. The lines caught him and snapped onto whatever they touched like power cords.
Once he was immobilized, the voice spoke again.
RESTORATION POINT SELECTED… EXECUTING… 0%
He felt it again, like he was being pulled apart. But this time, it was as if each time a part of him was torn away, it was discarded.
30%...
He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came.
58%...
He could feel his entire reality being swallowed beneath the waves of a ruthless sea and consumed by frenzied sharks.
94%...
He tried once more to scream, and somehow it worked. His cry rang through the empty void, echoing against nothing, until it cracked like a broken microphone and faded away into silence.
100%... RESTARTING ADMINISTRATOR…
The once empty shell twitched to life, a single glowing eye of gold gazing into the void.
"Hm… Guess I am back on the clock, eh?" it sighed. The sphere ceased its glowing and the lines anchoring the body faded away. In seconds, the darkness lifted, and he was back in the lobby of the dimension.
Opening his palm, a trio of blue dice appeared, and seeing how he had nothing better to do, he started tossing them. "When will I catch a break? Nothing interesting happens here…"
"Well, this is unexpected…" Glave had never done this before, so unknowns were bound to spring up. This, however, was not one of the ones he planned for.
He was stuck; stuck in some place between the dimensional crossroad and the real world. He calculated the jump perfectly, and Add wasn't able to do anything. So how did he come here?
He then heard that same fog horn, and saw the same red tint as before. "I see. I didn't account for the possibility it would see me as an anomaly. Oh well, it was worth a shot at least." The system was indeed too smart. But he knew what directive it would take in this situation.
Deletion.
It wouldn't risk a reset after what just happened. It would completely wipe both him and Add's body. And this of course meant that Add technically never existed in the first place.
But this was only one possible outcome. There were countless others, all including himself and the boy. Some would see them never meeting, some killing each other. But this was the comfort he took as he disappeared.
That another him, and another Add, still lived on elsewhere.
Just not here.
And those were his last thoughts as the space consumed him...
"Should we go back and look for him?" Aisha asked. Elsword was still on the ground.
"Glave is probably talking to him about something again. They always do that. Let's just wait and see what ha-" Raven started, but then something changed. He forgot what they were waiting for. All ten of them had gotten out, albeit unceremoniously, so he assumed they were still waiting on Elsword to pick himself up off the forest floor.
"Hey, Els. Get up, we gotta get back to the village before nightfall. Hagus wants us to help hand out candy to the trick or treaters," Elesis urged, poking her brother with her foot.
"Haven't I suffered enough?" he groaned. Elesis laughed as she picked him up and threw him over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
"Then suffer the indignity of being carried by your sister. Let's get going guys!"
"Hey, put me down!"
"You didn't want to get up…"
"Finally, I could use a shower to freshen up…"
"Rena, last time you 'freshened up' it took you almost two hours. We don't have time for that this go around."
"Are any of the candies El Rocks?"
"Lady Eve, I don't think they make those…"
"Oh, I can't wait for the festival tonight!"
"What? So you can fall on your butt trying to dance again?"
"You can all leave the candy giving to me!"
"Absolutely not, Lu. You will be under my strict supervision."
And thus, the El Gang celebrated another Halloween, the terrors of the night drowned by screams of joy and laughter…
So, was it scary enough? Never did horror before so I am not too sure how I did. Anyways, how I portrayed Henir's Space and Time is my own idea and not canonical by any standard. If anything happens to match up, it is coincidence. So please Read and Review. Until next time!