Toon Tower
Part 1: Curiosity
Chapter 1: Wonder
There is now a portal in the 32nd floor of the tower. This portal is a circular anomaly that spins slowly in a spiral motion, sort of like a black hole. A black and white hole, to be precise, as pure white and black streaks paint its spiral in a hypnotic fashion. What's truly strange about this portal is that is has no edges and no third axis. The white and black streaks seem to blend into reality, and its lack of a third dimension means that the portal turns practically invisible when viewed to the side, and you can never tell if the center is too close or too far. The portal is extremely difficult to perceive, let alone comprehend.
What is this strange portal's function? It allows the direct transportation from the tower to entirely different universes that share a link to it. What allows this portal to be used effectively by living beings in and out comes in the form of two single, yet very significant words: curiosity and desire. Wonder and want.
Voices can now be heard from within this one portal. Those are the voices of the inhabitants of the universe that this tower is currently communicating with, specifically the state of Delmarva, US, in its own Earth. The voices sound baffled; questioning, speculating, and mocking the portal's presence in their world. A smaller voice loudly describes the portal as 'awesome' and 'cool', wishing to know its purpose, a perfect demonstration of the necessary sense of curiosity for the portal to work. The confused voices turn into frantic shouts as the portal reacts to the small voice's body, preparing to pull it into the tower. The small voice does not even get a chance to scream as he is dragged in, disappearing out of his universe and into the tower.
In the tower enters Steven Universe.
He falls to the floor, somewhat dazed from the impact, unaware of what just happened to him at first. Then, his eyes open, and sees the run-down room he just fell into, damaged due to years of abandonment. The weak LED lights flickered in a vain attempt to illuminate the battered large room, a regular door in the right corner half-opened to barely reveal the hall beyond it. Steven stammers as he stares at the room's terrible state, finding it to be a grim place. His face begins to sweat as he scrambles to his feet and tries to get back into the portal.
The power goes out. The portal disappears. You see, even portals require an electrical source of energy. Steven is now stuck in an old dark tower without the Crystal Gems to help him. His heart races and his breathing is more rapid. He sweats more profusely as he is consumed by dread.
"W-w-well..." he struggles to say to himself, "I guess I'll just...gotta find my own way out...huh?"
Steven crawls to the floor trying to feel his way in the darkness. The room looks even grimmer than before. The thought that something could lurk in the shadows and the Gems aren't there by his side added to his overwhelming dread as he frantically crawls through the floor trying to find something. Luckily, at a corner he finds a strong flashlight just conveniently left in the room and coincidentally possessing working batteries, and his fear temporarily eases. He picks it up and laughs a little as he proceeds to try to turn it on. Then the door leading to the hall slowly creaks wide open, and Steven is still as he stands right in front of it. Dirty windows to the right dimly illuminate the hall, allowing Steven to see it more clearly.
He sees a figure just at the end of the hallway.
He grits his teeth not to scream, but Steven's heart now beats faster and he continues to breathe heavily through his nose as he stares at the silhouetted thing standing at the end of the hall, its bright eyes staring back at him, fixated, and still. Lingering seconds pass between stares as Steven begins to calm down. He notices that the creature doesn't seem all that threating to him. Its eyes did not express hostility so much as they expressed fear, and he can subtly hear the fearful breathing from it. It almost looks scared too.
Steven finally decides to move. He sighs and steps forward. Suddenly, the creature hunches over, its pupils shrink, and sprints away behind the wall to the left of the hall.
"Wait!" he cries out, but the creature is now long past gone. Indeed, he's not alone.
Steven sighs deeply again and turns on the flashlight. It brightly illuminates the worn wallpaper and the dusty floor, highlighting the state of disrepair that matches that of the entire tower. With finger and thumb on his chin, he slowly makes his way out of the room.
"I guess I better go find that thing," he spoke to himself, trying to break the dreadful silence with the sound of his own voice.
Walking slowly down the hall he looks to his right and sees the filthy windows, so unclean he can't actually see what lies outside. He can only guess that it is daytime, and possibly cloudy. He looks to his left and sees an old wooden door. He's tempted to open it, but that is not his main concern at the moment. He can faintly hear some wind from behind the door, and he could see some light from underneath it. He ignores it and continues to walk.
At the end of the hall, Steven turns left. He travels yet another hall, the same to the one he just passed. So alike to the one behind him, that Steven has to look back to make sure he didn't simply imagine having left the room. He gulps as he continued to see the same sights as before. He turns left. Another hall, the same as before. But this time, right in front of him, he sees a deep, dark corner housing strange elevator doors. Steven decides to ignore it, already unsettled by everything else.
He turns left, same as the second hall.
This can't be right, Steven thinks. He's just traveled left in three directions, yet he isn't travelling in a circle. He isn't ending up where he started, yet the halls remain seemingly unchanged each time he turns left. Disturbed, Steven stops. He sweats as he ponders if he should turn around, back to where he came, back to the room. Perhaps the portal may return and take him back to Beach City, leaving the dreaded tower and never wanting to remember it again. But he isn't sure if the portal was ever going to return. At least not until he finds out what is going on. He has to understand where he is and what is happening if he wants to go home, he figures. He assures himself that he can defend himself if something happens, with or without the Gems. With a deep sigh, he presses on.
He doesn't remember how long he is walking. He stops paying attention to his surroundings because of the near-endless repetition. He had practically memorized the pattern of the seemingly never-ending path: hall, hall, elevator, and hall; hall, hall, elevator, and hall, and so on. He is no longer afraid or disturbed, but bored from the unchanging environment, his heart no longer beating as quickly. He could just take a nap right there, if Steven didn't find it to be unwise.
But around the 16th floor, Steven finally notices something different in the left wall. Something that breaks the pattern at last. He stops dead in his tracks, surprised at the change. His boredom fades as he shines his flashlight at a partly-open door that leads to a dark room, the only light coming from yet another door at the end of the room, but still too dark. Steven pushes the creaky door and steps in.
Inside, many old papers float through the breeze of the door opening. The dark room is nothing but papers and books, every one of them blank, as Steven finds. He walks inside the room shines his flashlight through the papers on the floor and the pile of books, figuring them to be perfect hiding places for the creature he saw. As he reaches the middle of the room, Steven suddenly notices that his footsteps sound different. He points his flashlight down and kicks away the old papers obscuring the floor, and finds himself waking on another door fixed to the floor. Steven quickly steps back in surprise, then points his flashlight upwards to find yet another door fixed to the ceiling. Two doors to the walls, two doors to the floor and ceiling. Four doors in each room. Doors everywhere.
Steven tries to leave, but notices a piece of yellowish paper on the floor standing out from the others. It is not damaged or broken or even dusty like everything else, and most of all, it wasn't blank. Puzzled, Steven walks over to it and picks it up. He gasps and his eyes widen. It is a map of the tower.
Steven excitedly reads it, his fear subsiding, and soon realizes how truly amazing and mysterious the tower really is. All those doors to left of the halls lead to various rooms, most of them adjacent to each other through three more doors; one in the wall leading to the room behind it, the other two leading to rooms above and beneath. Steven finds the idea positively fun, but he can't quite make out what exactly the rooms themselves are for. All the rooms clearly have a function, but he can't make out the interiors, as if someone had scribbled all over them. The only rooms that aren't scribbled is the Portal Room where Steven entered the tower, and the room where he is now, labeled the Study Room. Steven soon regrets not having opened those doors.
Steven is also compelled to jump in relief as the map finally shows him the secret behind the endless path. The tower doesn't have stairs, rather, long slopes that circulate around the rooms. The hall that Steven walked through the entire time was a slope designed at an angle that whoever walks across it doesn't realize they are going down; the windows and doors align across the slope to give it the impression that the hall is a horizontal line. Steven stares at the map in both amazement and unsettledness at the mind game the tower's design had played on him, but he still doesn't know what the strange elevator is for. He doesn't see it anywhere on the map.
As he looks down at the map further, he notices that the tower from the 8th floor down looks relatively normal, almost like a large lobby to an apartment building or a hotel, like he saw on commercials. It has a kitchen, a dining hall, restrooms, and an actual entrance. At least, it looked normal, as apartment buildings typically don't have four towering support beams holding up the rooms. Like a hotel, the second to eight floors contain guest rooms, far more normal than the map showed him.
Finally, the bottom of the paper read faintly: Toon Tower Resort Magic Map.
"Oh, that's cool!"
A voice on his shoulder. The fear is back.
He swiftly swings his flashlight at the source of the voice.
They both scream.
Steven tumbles to the floor in terror as the creature attempts to scurry away. As Steven coughs the dust and crawls to his fallen flashlight, his terrified mind starts to recall what he just saw. That thing was right on his face. It was watching him read. It was right next to him. He grabs the flashlight and points it to the fleeing creature. That thing…
The light shines on the creature fully. Steven can only stare in confusion at the giant blue cat before him. Aside from his feline head being larger than his body in proportion, the cat had clearly humanoid anatomy; he is wearing a tan sweater and grey pants, hunched over in two legs, and has a balloon-like tail on his rear. While Steven is simply uncomfortable, the cat stares in fear at the light with his pupils dilated, and quiet squeaks emit from his mouth. Relaxing, Steven slowly gets up, but the cat starts to bolt behind the door to the hall. Steven shouts.
"H-hey! Don't be scared! I'm-I'm just as scared as you are! I'm scared too...Let me see you. Maybe we can help each other." Steven calmly holds out his hand towards the scared cat. Still hunching over, never taking his eyes off Steven, the cat slowly steps back into the room. Seeing Steven's friendlier stance, he breathes through his nose and starts to stand up straight. His ears perk upward. His eyebrows begin to relax, though they soon curl into a look of bafflement. He tilts his large head.
Then he opens his mouth.
"…You… speak English?! What are even the odds, man?"