"Ugh!" Esmee grunted as she dove behind a pile of nearby rubble. Lightning crackled through the dark sky as the shrieking of bats struck. Lightning Bats were normally a pain in a neck, and these were no exception. As soon as she was sure they were gone, she peeked over the edge, trying hard to see her attacker through the smoke. When she had been told that Triton Avenue was overrun by the undead, she hadn't believed it. Man, was Esmee regretting that now. The groans and moans that tore through her ears alerted her to the horrid evil lurking in the corner.
"Ha!" She conjured up a Leprechaun to deal with the villain, who was then viciously pelted by golden coins. Esmee never understood why that did so much damage. Were the coins poisoned? Spiked? Milk chocolate? The answer was, of course, magic. It was always magic. The monster leapt back up, despite the inexplicably magicly gold caused damaged, ready to cast another deadly spell. Before it could do so they both were alerted to the sounds of something either hitting someone or being hit. Both turned their heads, and saw that the source of the interruption was a Scarlet Screamer that was running into a wall. Looking around, they saw that the sky had turned green and that any and all nearby creatures had frozen in place or were also running into walls.
Esmee and the Rotting Fodder she had been fighting looked at each other and groaned. The two sighed in unison and trudged over to a nearby stone column. The Rotting Fodder grunted as it pulled back a secret latch and Esmee grabbed the phone hidden inside. It was old and worn, but she paid very little attention to that as she hit the archaic buttons of the flip-phone.
"Thank you for calling Wizard101 Glitch Hotline! Please stay on the line, someone will be along shortly to fix the universe and reality as you know it!" The voice was overly cheery, and the cheesy elevator music that followed was even cheerier. Esmee sighed and sat down on the worn sidewalk, holding the phone to her ear. The Rotting Fodder walked over and sat down next to her. The two sighed in unison, the elevator-ish music being the only other sound. Well, besides the sounds of monsters and wizards running into things, but that was besides the point.
"Urgh." The Rotting Fodder finally groaned. Esmee looked up in shock at the undead creature, indignant.
"It is not my fault! It could have just as easily been your dumb Lightning Bats spell." The Rotting fodder groaned again in response.
"Well, it could've been!" Esmee pouted, arms crossed over her chest. Another "silence" passed over the two, until the Rotting Fodder yet again broke it.
"Oog?" Esmee turned so that she could face them, still in a grumpy huff.
"No, I don't know why it's called the Wizard101 Glitch Hotline." Now it was the Rotting Fodder's turn to become indignant.
"Grah!" Esmee gave it a bewildered look. Seriously?
"No, I don't think Rotting Fodder101 Glitch Hotline sounds better." The Rotting Fodder huffed and pouted.
"Ack!" Esmee rolled her eyes. The undead could be so immature.
"Yes, fine, I'm biased. Happy?" The Rotting Fodder seemed to think it over and shrugged.
"Rahg." The scenery changed again, with the grass being pink, the trees blue, and the sky black. "Grah?"
"Oh, my name's Esmee." The Rotting Fodder nodded. "What's yours?"
"Ack." Esmee hummed and hawed.
"That's… Pretty long. Mind if I just call you Bob?" The Rotting Fodder shook its head. "Oh, come on! Your name's too long for me to remember! Please?"
"Urk?" Esmee grimaced, but nodded anyway.
"Okay, you can call me that if I can call you Bob." The Rotting Fodder- Bob-, nodded again.
"Soooooo, Bob, have any family?" There wasn't much to do, and the darn phone was still playing the elevator-ish music.
"Oog." He also held up two fingers.
"Two kids, huh? I imagine they must be quite a handful." Bob nodded.
"Grah." Esmee couldn't believe her ears. She started laughing and laughing, almost falling off the sidewalk as she did so.
"R-really? They actually d-did that? HAHA! Boy, I bet they're going to be hectic as teenagers." Bob shuddered and groaned, giving a nod of defeat.
"Rahg?" Esmee turned bright red and frantically shook her head.
"Oh no. I'm still just a teenager. Heck, I'm not even engaged!" Bob gave her a weird look, his head tilted.
"Ack?!" Esmee scowled and pulled the brim of her hat down.
"No, it's not a child army. Even if it's entirely made up of children, and no adult wizards ever do anything, that doesn't mean that… it's a… child army." She finished lamely. When put like that, it sounded exactly like a child army. Okay, so maybe child labor wasn't exactly putting the Wizarding Community in a good light, but who was Bob to judge? "It works in all the kids books!"
"Blarg." Oh, he was just rubbing it in now.
"Oh please. At least wizards regenerate when we're beaten. You guys are gone for good when you're defeated!" Bob started to laugh. Hearing a Rotting Fodder laugh was somewhat unnerving, especially with everything else so quiet. It sounded like the noise that came from rubbing scrap iron against a yowling Firecat.
"Urk." Oh. That actually made sense. Well, how was she supposed to know that the undead and other creatures also regenerated? I wasn't like anybody told her before or anything. Actually… Did anyone else even know? Or were they equally convinced that the things they vanquished also died? "Ragh?" Oooooh, that was bad.
"W-well, I mean, I figured… Oh come on! Give me a break, I'm an impressionable kid!" Yeah, looking back on it, it was so wrong to think that she had actually believed she was going to kill Bob. What kind of monster was she?
"Oog." Bob patted her on the head. He didn't seem too bothered by the concept. Bob had forgiven her for whatever reason, but Esmee was a bit too shaken up to even want to find out why.
"When do you think they'll finally pick up?" She asked, holding up the phone that was still playing music. As if to answer, the music stopped suddenly and a loud ding sounded. Esmee almost dropped the phone in surprise, fumbling with it.
"Ragh." He thought he was soooo funny.
"Yes, it seems like now, doesn't it?" She plugged one of her ears so that she could hear whoever had answered better.
"Sorry for the hold up, I just finished getting all and any trolls out of Unicorn Way. They never have enough respect for those of us at tech support, the no good members. What's up?" The voice at the other end was garbled, and it was hard to tell if it was a man or a woman. Esmee didn't even want to think about how Troll Mercenaries of all things could have possibly gotten into Unicorn Way. What was "Tech Support" or "Members"? She'd heard that the people who worked at Wizard101 Glitch Hotline were nuts anyway, so maybe it didn't matter.
"Uh well, I was in this battle, and now-" She didn't get to finish.
"Let me guess: Everything froze up or started running into things, right?" Esmee wondered if the crazies at the Hotline were mind readers.
"Yeah, and now-" She was cut off again.
"The sky, the grass, and other shrubbery are all different colors, right?" Yup. They'd changed colors again, to being all black except for a very dark red sky.
"Yes, and I-" For a third time Esmee was cut off. This was frustrating, and that voice was becoming a very grating noise.
"Great. You have a code 666 glitch#bug. I'll be over right away." The phone suddenly went dead. Esmee huffed as she stood up and glared at the phone. She more or less threw it into the hatch that was in the stone column, and heaved it shut.
"How are they going to just "be right over", anyway?" Bob shrugged, the bones in his shoulders making some kind of cracking noise.
"Ack?"
"Nah, that'd take years to-" Just then a wizard dressed in long concealing robes and a hood popped up surrounded by blinding white light, just as Bob predicted. "You win."
"Is this the- WOAH! Yeah, definitely a code 666 glitch#bug." The person's voice was still garbled for some reason, and they walked almost like a ghost. Oh yeah, they definitely were annoying the heck out of Esmee. "Okay lady, first thing, don't freak out. The Rotting Fodder won't hurt you. It's because of my… my seriously awesome magic, and-" It was Esmee's turn to interrupt.
"His name's Bob, and I know he won't hurt me." The cloaked person started to sputter.
"You… You named it?!" Bob groaned and shot the offending person a glare.
"Yeah, I agree. Seriously, how many wackos have you met?" The person's shrouded head tilted.
"You understand it?!" Bob lifted his spade slightly and grunted. Esmee wanted to join him, but decided that the sooner reality was put back together, the better. That meant not killing their "help", unfortunately.
"How dense are you? Who can't understand a Rotting Fodder?" The person, who Esmee decided to dub Pain-In-My-Neck, spluttered some more.
"You actually can understand that? All I hear is "Grooooooagh" and the like." Bob and Esmee turned to each other and simultaneously let out suffering sighs. The only person who could put reality back together was an idiot.
"Never mind, just do your job." Pain-In-My-Neck started to say something, but stopped and shrugged. They walked into the center of the street and raised their arms. They looked pretty ridiculous.
"Have it your way. ABRA-CADABRA!" Shockingly enough, that actually did the trick. Everything returned to their normal color, people started moving, and the Scarlet Screamer was booted from the sidewalk and back into the street after the protective magic kicked back in. The same happened to Bob, and Esmee turned to thank Pain-In-My-Neck. Saying "Thank you" meant saying "Goodbye" faster. Surprisingly enough, they were gone.
"Hellooooo." Well, not quite. They were hanging upside down in midair, their robes somehow not falling off. "Thank you for using Wizard101 Glitch Hotline, please try not to break reality again. Oh, and remember: I don't exist. Please carry on like this never happened. Or you will disappear in your sleep!" Seeing Esmee and Bob's equally shocked looks, they laughed. "Kidding! But seriously, this never happened." They then disappeared in a flash of white light that everyone else seemed to miss.
Esmee turned to Bob, ready to resume battling. There was only one issue, though. She couldn't just forget. Instead of seeing him as "the monster" or "the villain", he was Bob. He was the father of two crazy kids who needed him, and he was a nice guy. For the undead, at least. Even if he would regenerate, could Esmee really kill someone that she knew was a thinking, feeling person? Especially a person with two kids? No. Bob seemed to be having similar issue himself. It really wasn't any fun to battle someone you knew wasn't evil to the death, especially when you'd just gone through seeing reality crash on itself together.
"What say we both retire early?" Bob seemed to like the idea, and waved her goodbye. She waved back, and they both picked up their respective tools and returned to their respective homes. People would scorn her as another ditz who thought peace was the answer, and Esmee figured he'd probably get a bit of ridiculing from his fellow undead, but if seemed alright. After all, if all people could see that the enemies they were fighting were actually people like them, wars wouldn't happen.
Maybe the Spiral could become famous for peace instead of bloodshed. It would just take time and effort to get to know one another. Even in her head it sounded unrealistic, but ideas were already forming. Esmee felt that if Malistaire actually won, it wouldn't be so bad. At least, not if all the "monsters" were like Bob. Not so bad wasn't something Esmee aimed for, though. No, she was going to see peace happen. She would open people's eyes. She could try at least, aim for a future where maybe one day she could just chat with Bob and meet his family face to face without anyone getting sentenced to death for treason. To think, this all started because of the universe destroying itself accidentally during one seemingly normal battle.