Chapter 3

Maguro could barely move. He was trapped in some kind of suspended animation. Opening his eyes, he tried sweeping his hair out of his eyes with a shake of his head, but even an action like that took effort.

Before him lay a... field... filled with purple and navy blue gaseous content. In the distance, stars dotted the horizon. From certain points in the plain, black blobs formed and disappated, leaving behind nothing but black dust that sprinkled the nearly nonexistant ground.

Maguro forced himself to look down. He was levitating, it seemed, in some kind of black blob. He tried to remember the past few moments. He recalled his mind racing, as strange patterns flitted past his eyes before disappearing into a void.

He thought harder. At the end of his strange journey, he remembered a fairly human shape with a wide slit of a grin.

Hm... oh yeah, Ringo!

Maguro groaned in his throat. He had to find her. This place was beyond logic, as far as he could see, and even though both of them had seen the same amounts of weirdness in their lives, Maguro could handle it. Ringo, however, could not.

He had to find her before she lost her mind. Figuratively, of course...

Right?

But first, he had to find a way out of this blob. It seemed to be sucking him in slowly, and Maguro felt an affinity towards something he haven't felt in a long time.

Was it... Could it be? Was he afraid?

No, no, of course not. He just didn't want to know what awaited him in the black depths of the strange thing he was trapped in.

Struggling, he managed to rip out his arm and his kendama from the blob. The blob, as if now realizing it was being attacked, whirred and expanded. Maguro gasped as the blob came up to his mouth. Sooner or later, he was going to run out of oxygen. At least, he thought he would.

As hard as he tried, he just couldn't fight it. For the second time, he was sucked into something.

Well, crud. I'm never going to be able to play that game I've ordered last week, Maguro thought.

He shut his eyes tightly and held his breath. He didn't open his eyes, but something felt very odd. He felt as though... He was falling.

Turning purple with holding his breath, Maguro gasped. Then sucked in air. Then gasped again. He could breathe!
Carefully, he opened his eyes. Instantly, a blinding light scathed them. "Oh, okay, that's bright!" he hissed.

"Oh, great, I can talk now. What the heck just happened?" he mused to himself. After a quick shrug, he muttered. "Eh, who cares. I just need to figure out where Ringo is."

Looking about, after his eyes got accustomed to the blinding light, he noticed he was in a very familiar place. Fields upon fields of flowers awaited him, along with a stone path that led to a rustic old windmill. Wait... This looked like the flower garden in Primp town!

"What am I doing-"

"AHHH!" A screech broke him out of his thoughts. He spun around and saw a very familiar human as well.

"Ringo!" he sighed with relief. "Hey! Hey, Ringo, over here⭐! Wait-"

He blinked. Ringo was here, that was for sure, but she was not following Newton's Laws very well. She was upside down in the sky, trying to run, and spinning. Behind her, a bunch of Puyos were bouncing along in the sky, as if there were some kind of upside down invisible walkway there.

"Uh... Ringo?" he asked, scratching his head. "Is that you?"

He tried to take a step forward, but then realized...

"Oh, I'm floating too." his foot went right through the ground, as if he were a ghost. "A ghost, huh..."

He splayed his arms and air-swam towards Ringo.

As soon as Ringo noticed him, she squeaked. "Ahh! More figments of my imagination! Get away, Maguro from my subconscience!"
"Whoah, whoah, hey." Maguro looked insulted. "Do I look like a figment of your imagination to you⭐?"

"Oh great." Ringo curled into a ball and shook her head. "Now my subconscious is talking to me. I'm going insane."

All around them, the Puyos bounced angrily. Maguro sighed and whipped out his kendama. "Okiedokie! Guess I'll have to prove it to you⭐."
He struck the first Puyo with the ball and it was shoved into the second one. He did this in the same fashion for the other ones, until the four Puyos began popping in short little chains.

"And... there! Lightning Drop⭐!" After all the Puyo were cleared, Maguro brushed off his pants, as see-through as the rest of him. "See, Ringo? 100% real⭐!"

"That doesn't prove anything! Those Puyos are obviously a part of my mind, too!"

"Oh, for crying out... here." Maguro grabbed her arm and helped her stand up. "See? I'm more or less physical."

Ringo thought about this for a long minute before slapping him. Maguro flinched back with a gasp.

"Okay, what was that for?!"
Ringo seemed satisfied. "I can hit you. That further proves I'm not crazy. So you're really here, Maguro?"

"Uh, I dunno, you tell me!" Maguro rubbed his cheek with irritation.

Ringo thought for a moment. "Cool. I'm good now. Are we ghosts?"
Maguro shrugged. "Maybe? But then, why am I still holding my kendama?"
"Hmm..." Ringo forced herself to float to the ground. "But then..."

Suddenly, Maguro could hear voices in the distance. "Hey look⭐." he said to the red head.

In the center of the flower field, three people were arguing. Maguro floated above them, prepared to ask where they were, when he heard Ringo suck in a breath from behind him.

"M-M-M..." she covered her mouth. Maguro gave her an odd look.

"What's up?"

"L-look... Those kids..."

"The...?" Maguro peered closer at the kids, and realized they looked EXTREMELY familiar. "Wait, those two-"

"They look like us!" Ringo exclaimed, floating next to him. Maguro could see that she was right. A redhead was getting in between a certain purple-haired fellow being scolded by a strange shadowy guy.

"Not just look like... they are us⭐." Maguro breathed, fascinated.

Ringo immediately went into her logic mode. "B-but, how is this possible?! Have we been replaced? Could we have gone through a time warp? CAN we go through a time warp?! I didn't know those existed!"
"We didn't know a lot of things existed before running into Amitie and Arle." Maguro pointed out. "Look who else is there."

"Is that ECOLO?!" she exclaimed. Her mind was officially blown, Maguro could tell. "Let's listen in! Maybe we can figure out what's going on here."

"My thought exactly⭐." Maguro grew silent to watch the strange interaction unfold.

"...I don't get it!" The blob shouted. It, sorry, Maguro nearly forgot his particular pronouns... ey growled in frustration. "Why do you exist anyways?! You poser! You can just enchant whatever you want to fall in love!"

Maguro tilted his head. It seemed as though Ecolo was referring to Maguro's "thing"... his special love-inducing, beautiful eyes. That's a story for another time, though.

Ringo, or, the smaller Ringo pushed between them. "Hold it! It's not Maguro's fault in the least!"

"You stupid-face!" Ecolo cried, disheartened. "Ringo doesn't deserve you!"
"Now, that's just childish." The little Ringo scolded em.

Ghost Maguro and Ringo glanced at each other. "This is all sounding very familiar." Ringo mused. "Was this when we went on a spree, trying to test your eyes out on whomever would pass us by?"

"Wrong. This is when YOU went on a spree, and I was the unwillling participant⭐." Maguro cracked a grin.

"Either way, we know one thing. This is the past." Ringo said. "The question is now, how do we get out of here?"
"You suck! I hate you!" Ecolo shouted at a very overwhelmed little Maguro. And with that, ey dashed away into the air.

Ringo gasped. "Quick, catch em! Ey are dimensional travelers, ey can get us out of here!"

The present Ringo and Maguro flew after Ecolo. They found em in a field, desolate and alone. Ey was crushing flowers with eir blobby fists and appeared to be on the verge of crying.

"Whoah." Maguro said with a frown. "I didn't realize how harshly... ey took to that conversation."

No matter how many times Maguro used those pronouns, they still sat funny on his tongue. It took most of his willpower not to say they, but ey. Ringo had it down flat, she was smart girl.

"Yeah..." Ringo stepped slowly to the ground. "Let's be gentle when we ask em."

They walked up to Ecolo, who was muttering. "Stupid pretty boy... Ruining everything... What's he got that I don't... Well, he's human, I guess... Human?"
Ey lifted eir head at the last word, intrigued. "Hm."

At that moment, ey turned around, prepared to fly away. Ey faltered when ey saw the present Ringo and Maguro standing there.

"YOU!" ey shouted. At that moment, the landscape around them began to crack and fall apart. Maguro quickly grabbed Ringo's hand, so they could stick together.

As everything fell into darkness, all Maguro could see was the menacing smile of Ecolo, like the Cheshire cat. But even that, too, disappeared.