Originally written for the small fandom ficathon "Yuletide."
Fin rot! Fin rot! Fin rot!
Frisket whines under her hand, and she nods. She cannot smell it, not like Frisket can, but it is there. She can almost hear it, even.
Electricity.
Enzo yells and hands fly up to his face- something wrong, something wrong, something wrong- and that fizzle of electric current seeps out between his fingertips, snapping and hissing in pitches so high probably only she and Frisket can hear it. Oh yes, she can definitely hear it now, wild flickers escaping from her friend's gorged out socket.
Her hands (Her many hands; could she have imagined this in the not-so-long-ago, back when she swam in deep waters?) reach down to the altered icons they are now wearing. Maybe it is just her, the horror of the moment and her prayers to whatever sort of User there might be beyond the world of games, but she feels like everything is in slow motion. Even the words of reassurance she mouths seem too sluggish to her ears, as if the movement of her lips and the sound they are making are out of sync somehow. Enzo's screaming, but his mouth is closed, gasping for breath, before the sound reaches them behind the glass. When she raises her head to watch- Will he remember the icon? She can't see! He is doing nothing! - she can feel each muscle in her neck stretch and contract one pixel at a time, impossibly slow. And, as time seems to stretch out in a way that her emotions cannot possibly be the cause of, she sees it. The descent of his hand, so gradual as to be almost subtle. How can he possibly make it in time?
Time!
AndrAia feels her eyes widen nanopixel by nanopixel up and up, as if a blink of an eye could be slowed down so much. Yes! Time is-
An arcing motion, and he thinks, for no more than a split picosecond, that his hit connects, but then the world rips apart in pain, the epicenter tearing right through his eye. He might be screaming. His circuits might be overloading. That's what it feels like, and can he- can he- can he-
What was he thinking again?
He'd told his sister off about being Commanddotcom. He should have said something else instead.
What was it he should have told her? There are no words in this moment.
His hands are clawing at the pain, blunted fingers useless, but there was something- what? - they needed to be doing instead.
He wishes-
He wishes a lot of things.
Stumbling hands move to his icon and in a moment of clarity hopes AndrAIa does the same.
Failure is what deletes him. There is pain and then -
Nothing.
- stopping! She is blinking and one moment she can count each picosecond between each infinitesimal movement and then next everything is perfectly normal. There is no thought to blinking. It is a quick, natural, thoughtless movement.
Time had stopped with the Game and started again.
Under her hand, she feels Frisket shake out the strange sensation. She remembers what she had been watching for- Yes! There in the middle of the floor Enzo lays, face up, neck tilted unnaturally far back. No electricity pulses out from his head. She could not see it. She could not hear it. It is not there. Lying on the ground before her, so close and so unreachable from behind glass, is a deleted corpse; a thing, not a sprite; not her Enzo; not her friend.
Fists hit glass and she slumps to the floor when two things happen at once.
She hears voices, alerting her the Game has begun again and she sees light. It flashes over Enzo and in one nano to the next his chest raises, taking in air.
"User preserves us! There's a wounded sprite here."
Wounded! AndrAIa whips her head around, trying to determine where the voice came from, when a group of not-game-sprits come bounding down the stairs, past the windows, into the arena. For a picosecond, they gather too tightly around her friend, blocking him from view, and she begins again, pounding on the glass. But they don't hear, or don't care, because after a moment, a Number Five grabs Enzo's arms and a Byte his legs. They begin to drag him just enough off that when the User comes in- a black-winged angel this time but no less formidable looking than the black beast before- it does not step on Enzo.
Leaving him there as if he was a deleted pile of coding rather than a breathing sprite, the group proceeds much as Enzo had, running, jumping and mis-guessing which window the User will choose. But the User does not choose hers, so she does not care, and instead stares at Enzo's rising and falling chest, willing it to keep moving. Another round, another failed window, and then they are all running, trying, for one last time, the right window. And somehow, just as Enzo had done, they manage, finally, the right one. A tall sprite reboots, white wings bursting from his back, and they fight. AndrAIa stares at Ezno, and, because she's not watching she will never be able to say later how it was the white-winged angel manages to win.
Enzo's vision blurs, and then he blinks, and he's seeing things through a golden haze. AndrAIa's face floats above him, close enough he can count the freckles sprinkled across her nose. Her mouth's moving; she's saying something. Her image is flickering in and out from dark. Shaking his head, he tries to focus, and that's when the pain floods in like too many volts jolting down a single wire. His back arches involuntary and he thinks he might break in two. He might have groaned or even screamed, but then hands reach up to hold his head firm covering his ear and stilling any movement, and it comforts him to realize they are AndrAIa's hands- until he realizes that AndrAIa is already holding his hand, so either she's grown three hands or someone else is there or-
They were still in the Game.
The realization sets him off, rearing up to try to make a run for it, to try and throw AndrAIa and Frisket behind his body. But another hand, larger than any of AndrAIa's could ever be, pushes him back down, and his vision flashes from golden to white before blacking out completely. The last things he recalls are a sense of feathered wings brushing up against him, and AndrAIa's breath against his ear, whispering, "You deleted, Enzo. But time stopped and started again in a new Game. You are back. You will be all right. You will be. You will...."
And, knowing his friends are safe, he blacks out.
Time does not slow with the User dead and she is able to leap out of the window and across the arena to grab at one of Enzo's hands. He stirs, his one good eye moving to focus in on her.
"You must take us with you!" she commands. There is no use for pleading, as they have no option. No option exists but get out of this place. Enzo jolts up at the sound of her voice and she pushes him back down. She whispers in his ears. She changes their icons. She watches as the Game dissolves around them, and she hopes to Hades she never sees that Game again.