It took a few hundred ticks for Sky's mind to fully process what his friend just told him.

A...what? A portal? He's...?

His eyes stared blankly at the bottom of the tub through the tinted screen of his sunglasses. He was suffocating in air, unable to draw in breath.

Seto was serious?

Images of his friend's body twisted into a more demonic form, a shell of what he once was, flashed through his head. How many limbs would he have gained by the time they reached him? Would he have any? Would they even be able to identify the body?

What would it be this time? Extra mouths, extra eyes, the possibilities were endless.

(oh god don't think about his body bursting at the seams with flesh and blood don't)

It was surreal.

He didn't even realize he had propelled himself towards the door until his hand rested on the doorknob.

"Oh thank god you're here, I was worried that-" a wheezing sound came from his air filters, and a strange bubbling sound that Sky always heard around him. Oh well, aliens. "Notch, I knew you were suppose to act fast, but at least put on something!"

Sky looked down and - oops. A towel was quickly thrown on, and Sky shuffled forwards to where he left his armour on the floor. His feet almost slipped on the too-polished floor and he let out a few choice swears under his breath. He could hear his friend from outer space mumbling about how his vision receptacles were tarnished and could never be clean from that — Sky guessed that this was the first time that TrueMU had ever seen anybody not from his species naked. Hopefully he wouldn't tell anybody about this incident.

Once he slipped into his athletic armour and ran over to TrueMU, already annoyed and tapping the shoe part of his all-covering spacesuit (a facade to cover his worry over Seto please let him be okay), he nodded. It looked like only the two of them were going.

A quick recon mission. Jump in, jump out, and if death met them smack-dab in the face, he would just respawn right back at his house. The lingering feeling of death always followed him each respawn - nobody ever remembered their death, from the fact that the memory wasn't stored in the backup yet, but that emptiness where you knew that your existence was suppose to cease, go to the Nether or Aether or whatever, was downright creepy. It was another sacrifice to live forever.

A budder sword hung on a rack as they ran through the hallway towards the elevator down, and Sky's hand reached out to grab it, his gloved hands grasping around the carved hilt.

Unfortunately, he also took the rack down with it. The crack echoed throughout the hallway, and another clang as Sky shook the remaining mechanism of the clasp off. Sky grimaced.

"What the feck?"

That accent. Dave had heard them, and from the corner of his eye he could see Dave poking out his head to check up on them, eyes widened in curiosity.

A window was coming up. Now that he thought about it, an elevator would be slow, and a bit boring. Why stand around in a stuffy room while you could be leaping across the tops of buildings? He watched as TrueMU activated his back and boot thrusters and steered into the window, glass shattering instantly on impact. Sky brought up both of his gauntlets over his face and tumbled out, the glass only glancing him. Wind pushed against his body as he felt himself start free falling, mentally and physically preparing himself for impact. If he could reach the pool right there, he wouldn't have to take the bruise (2 hearts of damage, his UI said. not that bad. A mere projection of his current health, and it wasn't unheard of for a person with 0 hearts to still stay alive, albeit with life-threatening injuries to the point where they died a few minutes afterwards, but it was mostly accurate).

A skyscraper's roof drew near, and Sky braced for impact. In his head, he drew out a path for him to take, leaps from balcony to railing to roof to balcony again already planned before he hit the roof. He could almost feel his feet pounding against the concrete and marble, bringing out his hands to grab at something to swing in a wildly different direction, or to preform tricks for style. His alien friend had it safe, but boring.. He briefly thought of what it was like, flying everywhere - people turning to dots underneath you, and the feeling of freedom, the blue of the landscape as you went wherever you felt like going, as long as you had the fuel to. The missing aspect of parkour and the sudden ease of it. It was like cheating.

Now that he thought about it, he felt the same nausea that he was imagining. the roof wasn't coming any closer and the glass floated in place.

This wasn't his own mind slowing everything to make his hits more precise. Lights blinked. Traffic travelled along their paths beneath him on the roads. The city was alive - not in a literal sense, of course, but it thrummed with chatter and the buzz of electronics, pulsed with lights, powered by that Notch-forsaken company YogLabs.

He strained to look at his back, or move anything, but whatever force was holding him kept a tight grip. His arms felt like they were squeezed by a vice.

"I'm going to ask again, what're you two doing?!"

Of course. Dave was a mage, and most likely didn't know of the ban. "Can you loosen up, please? Or put me down? I can't-" he felt the grip near his lungs tighten for a bit before slowly releasing, "-breath."

The glass surrounding him shot outwards with inhumane speed, flying off into the wilderness. Hopefully people won't complain about having to pick glass pieces out of their fish. Or complain about having to remove a glass piece out of their thigh.

The magic subsided, but kept him floating. He pushed himself so he would face the window that he leapt out of, the feeling of pushing on nothing but having a force in it eerie and unnatural. A faint blue glow tinted the world to an ugly green colour, mixing with the budder decorations to create an eyesore. To be honest, it was pretty much an eyesore already. TrueMU paused in the distance, the flames shooting downwards. if he said anything, he couldn't hear.

His sunglasses flickered to life the moment he thought that, and couldn't regret it more.

TrueMU: sky
TrueMU: what are you doing
TrueMU: Seto, remember?
TrueMU: are you floating
TrueMU: you didn't tell me you were also a mage
TrueMU: why aren't you moaning
TrueMU: wait
TrueMU: *moving damn that autocorrect
TrueMU: pure yoglabs evil
TrueMU: no seriously are you okay
TrueMU: am I hallucinating this?
TrueMU: do I need to get my visor cleaned?
TrueMU: let me use some symbols to display the human emotion of anger, of which I am feeling
TrueMU: :[

The text bombarded his vision and he winced, Dave shooting him a worried, maybe confused look, the magic spires his robe devolved into spikes pointed upwards like a frightened cat and letting off loose energy sparks, watching his sunglasses dotted with the white pixelated text. His neural connection started typing for him, and - I am not calling TrueMU a son of a squid please backtrack that - a message was formed in a matter of ticks.

SkyTheKidRS: dave's got me
TrueMU: should I blast him? I think I should be able to hit him, with minor damage to the building beside you guys.
SkyTheKidRS: he's a mage
TrueMU: wow, haven't realised that. I should put that down in my memory banks! what new information! as if I couldn't see the, you know, magic robes, or magic bolts, or magic aura, or magic MAGIC that is surrounding you
SkyTheKidRS: ...
SkyTheKidRS: look I think the situation will diffuse in a matter of minutes

A bright blue light formed where TrueMU was hovering.

SkyTheKidRS: DO NOT BLAST HIM

The light faded.

"Well?"

Sky didn't want to tell him about the incident. He didn't want to be on Dave's bad side. Getting on any powerful mage's bad side meant that it wasn't a matter of if they would chase after you and make you a smear of pulverised flesh and organs across their study wall, but when. He bit back his urge to be completely honest and come clean, digging his nails into his palm and refusing to meet the leader of ChaosVille's eyes. His sword floated just out of reach. "We're going to see a friend."

"So you jumped out the window and started freerunning?!"

The feeling of his sides being pushed made him gag for a moment before the magic loosened up, Dave yelling out a very quiet "sorry". There was a little audience on ground level now. Sky briefly thought of just shrugging and saying that it was normal here, and make a few quips on the fact that the leader didn't research into their customs, but the residual feeling of helplessness of his body hanging in the air, at whatever mercy the mage could conjure up, dashed away that thought as soon as it entered his mind.

"I'm not telling a lie, that's for sure."

Dave snorted and rolled his eyes, quite obviously so Sky would see. His armour buzzed with his kinetic barriers as they tried to free their owner from the grip, but to no avail - the lights on it dimmed. "Alright then, simpler question. Why'd you and Xephos have this - I don't know, angry staring contest after Kirin asked where Lalna was?"

"You didn't hear us?" Sky had no time to pick and choose his words, the sentence tumbling out in his confused state before he could fully process what he just said. His eyes widened and his eyebrows raised in shock.

"I mean, you just looked at him and laughed for a few ticks before figuring out the expression on his face, and then you guys just stared at each other before everybody else got bored-wait, you're an untrained mage? XEPHOS is an untrained mage? You guys are telepaths?"

The neural transplant. The hidden speakers inside his ear for long-ranged talking - how did Xephos hack through his safeguards and start talking to him right in his mind? Without him even noticing any difference, at all?

He mentally scolded itself after the thought crossed his head - YogLabs technology, stupid. It must have been a cakewalk to go in and start talking directly to him -

Xephos could be listening in on him at any moment. He could hack his senses. It's not like he already had tons of leverage against the king, ha ha, why not just make it worse?

A chill went through his spine. Dave huffed, body becoming tense, facial expression unreadable. A far cry from the happy, innocent little mage that was last seen hopping up and down nervously before the meeting. "Are you going to actually tell me something one day, or is it customary here to just stare blankly at people and hope that they can read your mind?"

The tips on Sky's mouth curled downwards, sweat already starting to bead at his forehead and form at his palms. He had a sudden urge to scratch himself, a feeling of dysphoria like he wasn't there, that he needed to rip out of this skin to crush the tiny little mage under his limbs, that he needed to escape. The city wasn't right. Nothing here was right. Everything was too bright. His breath quickened slightly as a headache started to pound against his head. Smaller aches forming across his back.

He needed to get this over with.

"A mage. We're going to see our friend, the mage, to check up on him."

Dave's expression reverted back to the smile, frighteningly quick, the jagged edges of his enchanted robes smoothing out to reflect his mood swap. "Oh, a mage? Pff, why didn't you say so? Had me worried for a few ticks there."

Sky tried to smile at him, instead having that dreaded feeling that he was just showing rows of his teeth instead of anything that looked remotely like a smile.

[WARNING: user [DaveChaos] is accessing mapmarker_groupURGENT. Recommend eliminating threat.]

His sunglasses flashed the text across. His mind formed a message to send to TrueMU quicker than he could blink and off it went, unfiltered -

SkyTheKidRS: what?

"Don't worry about that, just trying to find the co-ords so we can both go there together, huh? Haven't seen a new mage in ages. Absolute ages."

The last bit was spoken with a monotone, Dave's voice going dangerously low. Other than that, his tone suggested that this was completely normal. Like asking someone to go on a picnic near the beach instead of, you know, force-teleporting someone to a place of extreme peril and dark magic?

[WARNING: login code USER: YogLabsAdmin PASSWORD: **************** granted. overriding precautions. Welcome, employee. The coffee machine is still broken. Subjects 60-135 recommended to go to decontamination unit at once. Remember, we are your friends.]

SkyTheKidRS: yogl AB/s he's with yogla bS?
TrueMU: Sky?

[Location of SetoSorcerer - mage uploaded. Request teleport?]

How did Dave work for YogLabs? ChaosVille was just discovered, for Notch's sake!

SkyTheKidRS: Fly over to Seto, Dave's teleporting me there.

Shit, he didn't write that. Or think that.

"Dave, what the fuck are you-"

"Trust me, your friend's in danger anyway and you guys need to get to him fast. You should be rooting for me!"

"How in the Nether do you know that?!"

SkyTheKidRS: GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT GET OUT GETOUTGET OUT GTEOU TGET OUTOUTOU TOUT

[Teleport for 2 people requested]

Dave's body posture momentarily stiffened. For a brief tick, he saw something flash across his eyes - worry? Pure hate? The glowing neon rings that made up a demon's iris? Most likely worry. Sky felt the magic holding him let up, even for a moment, and started wriggling out to try and escape the teleport field, but the sensation of his body lurching forwards and his organs flip-flopping inside of him, the scenery around him melding and shifting like a glitching display from his city to a jungle, quickly erased any hope.

[We hope you have a nice day!]


To put it simply, everything hurt. Every inch of his body ached, the dull sensation of senses covered up by the constant throbbing pain. His arm lifted up a little, twitched in a way that was certainly not an indication of good health, and waved it in front of him, as if he could wave everything away as a dream that would just disappear with a slightest touch.

His body was shifted slightly to the left. Grass blades brushed over his back, his arms, his legs, like lying on a carpet. A prickly carpet with a few worms and assorted bugs crawling across it. His back lifted up out of the ground, as if in a trance, and he wondered how that could possibly work, why his limbs were so

odd

all of a sudden.

Like his body wasn't his own.

These episodes were rare, but Sky felt them nonetheless. Maybe a side-effect of cloning. He also hid them. Usually they came every few months, but lately...

The necklace vibrated once, somebody sending him a message, snapping Sky out of whatever that was. It felt different that time, a slight pressure added onto the limbs that were being moved around. Whatever it was, it dissipated before finally becoming a confused memory stored in Sky's head. Sweat stuck to him like slime, the humid air of the thick jungle almost choking him. One of his legs was on top of a bush with bright, yellow-and-red flowers blooming. His sword was to the right of him, lying there. It would have been beautiful under normal circumstances. Right now wasn't the time for sightseeing, or, regrettably, taking a nice bath, it was the time to find Seto and get out.

Where was Dave?

The scheming son of a wolf. He better have some good excuses for somehow knowing a top-secret YogLabs login that don't include him actually working for that omnicidal excuse for a company.

The message that woke him up can wait for now.

He bunched one of his hands into a fist and wiped some dirt off his face, the feeling of being soaked in cold, calming water suddenly seemingly like an unreachable luxury. Maybe a few jungle ponds would have to do, but it'd be like bathing in your own sweat - gross, hot, and probably full of bacteria. Added with poisonous frogs or venomous snakes.

Something warm and liquid hit his forehead. Rain? A minor annoyance, but not that bad. It washed away the dirt and grime that he and his armour collected, that was for sure. It was hot, but not terribly so, and he considered just standing there and waiting for the rain to wash across him for an impromptu shower.

Again, he brought up his hand to give it a quick swipe off, bracing himself for the torrent of rain that was quick to come.. Something seemed off somehow. He licked his lips, dry from his sweating, and recoiled slightly when the metallic taste of blood went against his taste buds, spitting and gagging it out of his mouth and watching the mixture of saliva and blood roll down a nearby leaf to the ground. Some kind of insect happened to wander along before getting caught in the trail.

It wasn't his own blood. He would have seen it immediately.

It was the droplet of "rain" that appeared earlier.

He was scared to look up.

He looked up anyway.

On the branches, the limp form of DaveChaos hung there, cuts slicing across his skin like a morbid decoration. The shift in leaves told him that he might he still breathing, or the wind was acting up today, but -

Maybe Dave had it all explained. Maybe Dave was honestly trying to help him. He DID save a lot of time by teleporting near Seto's house. Maybe Dave, the mage he is, could have stopped the Abyss portal. Maybe the reason he knew Seto was in trouble was because he could feel the magic in the air being strained and pushed, twisted into a screaming monstrosity of hate and flesh (and sometimes not even flesh).

Maybe Sky just killed an innocent today.

A heave. A sputter. To his relief, the mage groaned and rolled out of the trees, yelling when he hit the jungle floor. Small droplets of blood went flying along with moisture collected on the leaves. "Feck...why'd you have to go ahead and ruin the teleport?"

"Because I had no idea what you were doing?"

"Hmmph." Dave stared at him for a bit with a pouting expression over his face, before deciding to agree with him. "We're a bit off. You think your blobby alien buddy'll come here in ti-oh my god, are you okay?"

Dave rushed forwards hand placed a hand on either side of Sky's face, his sunglasses bouncing up and down on his head from his shaking. "Look at that bruise! And those rough spots! Musta taken off a layer of skin or something, wow, whoops. Sorry."

The person that was currently bleeding and had lacerations all over his body was worried about the person who just had a bruise. "I've had worse. Parkour after all, but, uh, you're bleeding."

Dave looked surprised. "Oh! The bleeding! Yeah," he raised up his left hand before a green aura went between the both of them, his cuts closing up on their own and Sky's bruise slowly going away. It was a bit unnerving to see a final spout of blood come out of every cut all at once before the liquid evaporated, out of all things, and all of the tiny cuts all over him slowly mend up and merge together to form seamless skin. "Forgot about that for a tick there."

A scream interrupted their quality bonding time, ear-piercing and close. He closed his eyes and sent out a quick ping.

SkyTheKidRS: truemu, I'm currently near seto's base. dave is fine.
SkyTheKidRS: seto, if you can still receive this, please be okay

"Sky?" Dave voice, cheery despite the odds, piped up, "Looks like some Abyss portal fragments are coming this way. Never seen one this close, wish I brought my notebook or something..."

Sky snapped his head around, his ponytail whacking Dave right in the face. Right where Dave's eyes were looking, there were a few cracks. Completely pitch black, except for white splotches. Like a spiderweb, forming their way towards them to ensnare them.

"Huh, nobody's ever seen that kind of aggressive behaviour in the wee beasties before...this might be a first! Damn, I knew I should have brought something to write in!"

His eyes couldn't pry themselves away from the Abyss that was encroaching on their territory. Dave's ramblings fell on empty ears as Sky's body tried to run away, call out somebody's name, anything, and thoughts were but a distant thrum against his head. Something brief flickered in the back of his mind. How could anybody, much less a human, stand up to this?

"Nobody's going to believe me...unless you also testify with me! Two eyewitnesses would stand a better chance." Dave paused, putting a hand on his chin and looked around thoughtfully, "Hm. The eyes are new. Wonder what happened in that realm to unbalance it like that?"

The white splotches were eyes. Any eyes. Human, animal, whatever. They watched the two squirm uncomfortably.

A quick survey showed that they were completely surrounded - Seto wasn't anywhere, which was worrying. A hopeful spark in Sky told him, tried to fool him into believing that Seto had the possibility of being alive, that the portal simply led to somewhere else into the overworld instead of the emptiness demon realm of Limbo. Normally he would have immediately tried syncing to another clone in stasis, transferring his consciousness to the new one while his old body broke up into little cubes that would splatter all over the jungle, but right now that would mean that Dave would be left alone out here, and TrueMU would have blundered right into this mess. Teleporting again would also destabilise the both of them, and he didn't feel like living out the rest of this clone's short life as a cancerous mass fused with Dave.

The ground beneath them cracked as it turned into more portal blocks, grass opening up to show nothing. The eyes seemed gleeful, full of malice and an almost child-like view on murder. Dave didn't seem that concerned, but a twitch in his eyes betrayed his inner emotions. Both of them were equally terrified.

"Ah. Well, Sky, it's sure been a pleasure to work with you, no matter how brief. Sorry for the miscommunication earlier, and, uh," he gulped as one tendril of his robes stretched oddly and spiralled into the growing portal like light in a black hole, "Just. Maybe we'll make it out."

SkyTheKidRS: truemu, start tracking me. I think I'm going to be transported somewhere else soon
TrueMU: dave again?
SkyTheKidRS: abyss portal's got us surrounded. I'm afraid

(-that I won't be coming back)

The last part didn't send.

TrueMU arrived to see nothing at all.