Chapter Nine:
"Bloody hell there are a lot of you."
Mordecai spun around, surprised, trying to find the source of the voice. He turned and his eyes followed the direction his ears heard the uttered words, and he found his attention being drawn to the metal grille walkways above his head that were attached to the ceiling by thick metal cords. Mordecai stumbled a few steps back to get a better look. Shrouded in shadows stood a figure. Blackness covered the top half of the body but light from a nearby lamp from the ceiling shone on the rest of the body, namely the legs. The light made a diagonal starting from the right hip finishing midway down the left thigh. But the light was evidence enough to see that the person wore dark green-grey camo-ish cargo pants that went three-quarters down the legs, rolled up until halfway down the shins. Below that, the feet were bare, showing the two-toed foot of a bird.
It was obvious the voice was a man's. It was a bit higher pitched than the usual baritone of a moustached macho-man, perhaps the voice of a singer or a young school graduate. A British accent tainted the voice, a light smooth spread of it on top of his words, making the words blend together in one flowing stream of dialect. The tone of his voice clearly showed the shock at the sheer number of people that likewise threw Mordecai into a state of awe and wonder.
The shadowy man leant forward, putting his hands in front of him to catch the handrail to support himself. Now the light shone on his forearms showing the brown feathers that covered them, with two stripy patterned rings around his arms. They were simple bands like Mordecai's, but a darker brown than the surrounding coffee colour that covered most of his arms, but on the top of the forearms Mordecai saw the two bands had points on them, patterns that made the two rings look like they had valleys, the points facing the elbow. Also like Mordecai, he had the same coloured rings around his fingers, a dark brown. He wore a beige coloured shirt - the colour those old-timey explorers from the Elizabethan era wore - and his sleeves were shoddily rolled up to just below the elbows, looking like they were pulled up half the time instead of being neatly rolled up, the cuffs sticking out like a conical shield or something to protect the elbow.
Then the man spoke again.
"Hey. Hey, blue dude without any clothes," Mordecai made a face. His head turned halfway around to see if there was anyone else he could be talking to, before he realised that he was the only one who was blue without any clothes. Which was quite a unique and somewhat unforgettable trait. Mordecai looked back at the shadow and raised an eyebrow while he pointed at this chest. "Yes, yes you- I mean," The voice suddenly picked up a slightly annoyed tone. "Who the heck can I be talking to?! You're the only one within earshot anyway!" A sigh was heard. "Right, so, blue guy. Can you go and rally up all those bumbling fools over there and get 'em to come over here? I need to talk to all of you."
"What, seriously?" Mordecai almost laughed with disbelief. "All- All, those guys? All of them? Like, all of them? Heh, you're joking right? 'Cause that's a lot of people. I mean a lot of people, dude." Mordecai turned around. He repeated himself once more. "A lotta people."
*Clunk* FWWWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
"Ow!" Mordecai rubbed the back of his head. "Dude! What the heck was that?" He looked up at the figure on the rafters, who pointed at the ground around Mordecai's feet. Mordecai looked down, then picked up the item that had so ceremoniously deafened him while giving him a fairly big lump on his head. Mordecai held the red and white megaphone in his hand.
"Use that," the shadow said, his tone of voice making it sound like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Get 'em here, get 'em listening, so get going." then the man retreated back into the shadows.
Mordecai looked at the plastic cones in his hand. He sighed.
Getting everyone together turned out to be a bit easier than Mordecai thought. The Skips' came willingly when he found all of them, the many Yeti sitting cross-legged in a circle, meditating. At that point, it was easy to get everyone else, seeing as how everyone trusted the wise immortal and his decision. Encountering a bunch of himselves was a bit disconcerting, but eventually they got past that and the treasure hunt for the others continued. The Rigby's and Muscle Men were a bit of a hassle, their brash and overbearing attitudes giving them cause to keep fighting. Nothing that a megaphone in their ear's couldn't handle.
Eventually they arrived at the Benson's.
The whole crowd of gathered friends and family watched the pink gumball machines continue their brawl. They attempted one of their previous tactics. Sending in a Skips to talk to all of them. The Skips arrived at the edge of the dusty dented ball of rage and flying metal limbs.
"Benson...'s," the Yeti said with caution. He raised his arm to his face, protecting himself in the case that one of the irate bunch of managers would accidentally hit him. "Could ya guys listen for a moment? Mordecai's got something to tell you."
Skips stared at the managers, a blank face put on as he watched them continue to fight, the Benson's obviously not hearing Skips's request over their screams and yells. The Skips turned to Mordecai.
"Pass me the megaphone."
Mordecai chucked the handheld loudspeaker to his friend who caught it and immediately brought it up to his mouth.
*ktsch* ~*"BENSON."*~ *ktsch*
None of the Benson's reacted. Skips tried again.
*ktsch* ~*"BENSON."*~ *ktsch*
Nothing. Still just fists and feet. The Yeti came to the conclusion that, because of Benson and his temper and his constant yelling, the park manager must've built up some sort of immunity to loud noises, lest he make himself go deaf. Skips decided to go for a different tactic. He turned and beckoned to his fellow Skips' and they all nodded in silent acknowledgement to some unknown goal that only their wisdom could see. All of the Skips' walked to surround the writhing ball of Benson's, becoming a circle. Then all of the Skips' went into the fray, and with the strength enough to kill a lesser raccoon, the army of Skips met the cabal of warring Benson's and began to pry them from each other's hold. Pretty soon, each one of the Skips held a struggling Benson above the ground and they proceeded to give the managers a few slaps on their faces to get them out of their blind rage. The Benson's began to look around.
"Skips? What's going on?"
"Skips? Why're you holding me up?"
"Skips! I demand you put me down at once!"
"Skips? Can I get an explanation as to why I see clones or something?!"
Then one of the Skips pointed at Mordecai and said,
"I think he can provide a better explanation than me. Which is surprising."
The whole crowd of Mordecai's, Margaret's, Eileen's, Rigby's, Muscle Men, Hi-Five Ghost's, etc and so forth turned their heads to look at this specific Mordecai. He looked at everyone and sheepishly brought his hand up to the back of his head, giving it a firm rub.
"Uhhh..." the Skips that had the megaphone before gave it to Mordecai. The bluejay put it up to his mouth. "Yeah, so I met this dude who can tell us what's going on."
Not a sound.
"Well what is going on?" A Rigby in the back spoke out.
"I have no idea, it's just that this guy'll tell us what we wanna know."
"Well where is he? Who is he?" An HFG floating next to a Muscle Man asked. Mordecai shrugged. "Then could you bring us to him?"
"That I can do," Mordecai said nodding. "I found him standing on one of those walkways above us." Mordecai looked up to see that the ceiling was just a whole array or criss-crossing walkways and beams, and he realised that they all looked the same. Which walkway did he find the stranger on? He spun left, then right, then spun back slowly to face his friends. "On second thought, I don't think I'll be able to find the guy after all."
"Then what the heck do we do?!" someone cried out, their tone smeared with a hint of panic. But everyone heard that panic, and before you know it, the entire jar of panic had been emptied out. Chaos broke out. Screams were heard, yells and cries of desperation were thrown about, some even thought about spending the rest of their lives stuck in a vast room and began to run around in circles to feel useful. But just when the crazy party was getting started:
"Hello? Yeah, you guys? 'Think I'm the chap who's meant to give you a heads up on all the cray-cray going on." The sudden voice was loud, authoritative, and completely different in tone than the nonchalant "do-whatcha-like" attitude from before. Mordecai looked up above him once more to see his newfound acquaintance leaning back on the handrail on the walkway with his hands beside him, while staring down at the raucous commotion below. But this time he was directly under the light, showing off the rest of his features. It seemed that the man - or, more like a teenager, if you looked at him closely - had the kind of voice that that got everyone's attention. Maybe it was the volume that he could speak, without sounding stressed like Benson. Perhaps it was the funny English accent. Maybe it was his tone, somewhere between, "this is important for you, and could decide what'll happen in your life from this point forward" and "but I don't really care". But it did the job. Everybody turned to him much like they turned to Mordecai earlier, but this time, with a touch of caution for the newcomer.
Mordecai saw the boy in his entirety now, and confirmed that the teen was definitely a bird. Of some species. His primary colour was a light coffee brown, with the only visible decoration being the bands on his arms. He wore a button-up beige shirt, made of a rough material, with numerous pockets for a shirt, two on the front of his chest, one on the right shoulder, and two lower down in front of his tummy, the kind you'd find on a hoodie. His pants we're the grey-green camo pattern from before, and was also dotted with pockets. His feathered head had the same shark fins that Mordecai had, but with two extra fins on either side of the big fin, and to finish off, the boy had a look of mild interest on his face as he took in the situation.
He stared at the group.
They stared back.
He raised an eyebrow and slinked lower into his stance, leaning back more so he supported himself on the handrail with his elbows, which was a bit too low and made him look like a chair. The teen suddenly stood up and took a step to the other handrail, before bending over it and making a ninety-degree angle of his body, leaning over the edge of the handrail.
"So heeeeeeeeyyyyyyyyyyy..." he droned out, pulling a smile at the same time. "Uh... I really have no proper introduction so..." He clasped his hands together and stood back straight again, taking in a breath through his teeth. "I'm Amias."
He paused. He surveyed everyone with a slow turn of his head looking like he was holding in more air than his lungs could handle. Suddenly, he let it all out in one explosive burst.
"Foof! Man, I feel like a huge load just got lifted off my chest! I mean seriously, after all these years living here and waiting until you guys came and actually giving me something to do! This is great! So you're okay with just listening to me? I don't need to act stupid and look cool and make seem like, you know, this ain't a really big problem - 'cause it is - but yeah I should probably explain everything right about now." Amias put his wrist up and looked at the watch there, before pressing a button on it so it let out a small beep. "'Kay, so lemme explain this big place-slash-room thing: It's one-fourth of the general area of the building we're in; it's the south-east wing, it's where we keep all our stuff and it sorta works like that room in Harry Potter where you imagine whatever you want and you open the door and - Da-da-da-daaaaa! Babies! Or whatever you want."
Amias said all this at a speed which only those with the sharpest ears could comprehend. He also choreographed some ad lib movements to complement his words, which pretty much went the same speed as his short speech. He stopped and took a breath.
"Moving on to the second subject I'm going to talk about - which is probably the second biggest thing on your mind right now right after "Where the hell am I?!", which I just explained - is the reason why you're hear, which is actually the most important thing to think when waking up in a strange place. So the reason why you're hear is because the Universe is about to kill itself off."
Here Amias paused to let the gravity of those words sink into the crowd before him.
"C-couldja say that last part again?" A Rigby asked.
"Universe is about to go "poof"!" the teen said with a little less drama than the sentence should have been said with, acting out a small explosion with his hands.
For the umpteenth time that day, everyone's heart practically stopped. A Margaret opened her mouth, breathing in a large intake of air. Before panic once again ruled in the room, reigning on a throne of gold with a nasty metal whip, Amias jumped back into verbal communication with everyone, attempting to calm their nerves.
"BUT! But. You guys, can stop that from happening. You're all here today, to save yourselves from your doom. And hopefully my life among yours as well. So I have with me here," Amias procured a sheet of paper from one of the numerous pockets on his pants. "...The wrong sheet of paper. This is the list to make sure I have the right park members from the right Universes. Hold on." The young bird once again delved into his pockets. He found the paper he was looking for on the pocket on his shoulder. "Aha! Yes, the itinerary to helping save the slowly deteriorating Universe we exist in individually. I think the best way to start this thing off is to cross off each of these little tick boxes when we reach them. Yeah. So I should start with the other list in that case."
Amias pulled out the previous list.
"'Kay, so when I read out your name, just do something to get my attention or whatever. So, starting us off, Mordecai?"
A chorus of "here's" resonated upwards to Amias' ears. The bird raised an eyebrow at the many Mordecai's.
"I really didn't think this through, did I? Crud. Uh, you guys, d'you know which worlds you came from or..." Everyone below shook their heads, some of them looking to their all-knowing yeti elders, who knew nothing as well. "Yeah, I guessed that. Uh." Amias leaned back on the handrail behind him. "Lemme think. I can come up with something to fix this. Duhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-" Amias held the single vowel for as long as his lungs could handle. Which turned out to be a long time. Around a minute after the beginning of Amias opera moment, he was still going strong, and was starting to lose the attention of his audience. Mostly everyone was getting used to the place, now no longer scared and shocked about where they had landed thanks to the many adventures they've had the joy of experiencing, but just bored and curious about what was happening. And now that the only thing entertaining their curiosity had crashed and burned, they were simply milling about, chatter starting to rise up like an adjourned school assembly with schoolchildren getting restless for the bell.
A sudden flash of blue light once again got the attention of everyone, simply gaining their attention and not surprising them due to the multitude of things overloading their mind. They watched as a small blue circle - much like the one that had sucked them up and brought them to his place - appear farther down the walkway to Amias' right, starting off no bigger than a baseball before growing in diameter until it was five feet wide and the edge went through the handrail, hovering slightly above the walkway. It was facing the crowd and raising some eyebrows as to what was next, but everyone kept their eyes glued to it, waiting. All of a sudden, a person walked through the portal, right foot after left. There stood another bird, female this time but with the same colours as Amias.
She stood a little bit shorter than the only other one up there, looking a little younger that Amias and wearing a really short pair of jeans that seemed to have been torn on the legs to look short. A snug looking "Mordecai and the Rigby's" t-shirt was around her top, with a few bracelets around her left wrist.
Her feathered head had the same wavy pattern as Margaret's, but with the main fin sandwiched between two other ones, much like Amias'. Her arms were crossed in front of her chest, showing off the single brown band on each arm, the band having an odd shape where it started on the top of her forearm and it gently curved towards her elbow as it came round to meet with itself on the underside of her arm.
"'Mias? You done yet? I'm getting hungry." Her voice was low and uncaring, sounding like whatever she saw displeased her and she was trying to verbally transmit that to everyone around her. If anyone had watched Teen Titans, she sounded very close to Raven. Unlike Amias, she had a normal American accent.
"Hey!" Amias woke from is stuck state of mind, jumping a bit at the seemingly sudden appearance of the girl. "Um, yeah, I'm having a bit of a problem. Just trying to take the roll call, and getting in a bit of a muddle not knowing who's from where and stuff."
The girl arched an eyebrow, barely turning her head to look down at the people below her.
"These guys? I already took account of all of them."
"Really? When?"
"When I took them." The girl said with a flat tone. "Trust me, anyone that came through I tagged. Everyone's here. Trust me, I'm your sister."
"All the more reason to not trust you, B." The entire conversation was achieved in near silence. Amias turned back to everyone. "Alright, my sister here, Bronwyn, has successfully managed to do what I have failed to do. So everyone, please give her a merry round of applause." Amias turned back to his sister and began to clap. It was quickly silenced when he realised no-one else was clapping with him.
"That's the person who destroyed my house?!"
Bronwyn coughed into her fist.
"Yeessssss..." Amias attempted to protect his sister. "Yes, she most probably did destroy your house. In which case I'll fix it up for you in a jiffy, but besides that, I think she managed to do a good job at getting all of you here. Be thankful you're all still alive," Amias turned to Bronwyn and cupped his beak with his hand. "Just... go through this and keep yourself occupied. Let me do the talking." He gave Bronwyn the list. "So all that's done, it's time to do some tidying up and organising. Just gonna give you a warning, many of you may not like what's going to happen next. But it's quite necessary to do to keep everything neat and tidy, so I'll try and keep you guys oblivious to what's really happening." Amias then waved his palm towards the floor, and directly below him on the concrete ground, up rose a small box-like thing. It sorta looked like a portaloo with the same height and width, but made of concrete. "Now, I'm going to ask all of some person or other with clones to step in, one at a time. Just remember to close the door before you when one of you enter."
Everyone below immediately put on a face of either confusion, fear or doubt.
"Right, who want's to go first?"
Nobody moved. Then a Rigby walked up, opened the door, revealing an empty room inside, and walked in, closing the door.
"In that case," Amias continued, "May the rest of the Rigby's come up?"
Soon, a stray raccoon would push itself through the crowd, some reluctantly, others with curiosity, but all of them ending up in a line before the portaloo. One after the other they filed in but not a single raccoon came out. Quickly, everyone was wondering where the raccoons were going, whether they were being killed or incinerated or dropped into a pit of acid or lava, or some thinking the portaloo was actually a suicide booth from Futurama. But Amias stood there, comforting everyone and making everything seem fine. He almost looked bored, watching the enormous amount of Rigby's walk into the portaloo. But at the same time he seemed to be incredibly focused on the portaloo, staring at it with an intensity that a inanimate faecal waste collection concrete room shouldn't be stared with. Before long, there only stood one Rigby left, a younger version of him that nobody had noticed before. And this Rigby was the most reluctant of them all.
"What're you waiting for?" Amias asked impatiently.
"What-. What the heck happened to them? Me?" The young teen Rigby inquired meekly.
"You really want to know? Then go inside and take a look."
"No, man. Dude, I don't think I'm that dumb,"
"Everyone else thinks you are," Amias muttered.
"But I'm not going in until I know what's gonna happen!"
"Well then you can knock." Amias finished.
Young Rigby turned back to the door of the concrete portaloo. He hesitantly brought a hand up to the door and gave two light knocks. Immediately the door opened revealing an older Rigby.
"What's in there?" young Rigby asked.
"Nothing," replied the other Rigby. "Seriously, there isn't even a toilet. There's just this tiny air vent. Dude, it's completely dark when you close the door except for a tiny bit of light from the vent."
"Oh." The younger raccoon said. "Where are the other... Uh, me's?"
"I asked the same thing to the dude before me. Then, this weird thing happened and I kinda remember seeing myself then, well, not seeing myself. Just come in, I don't think anything bad's gonna happen." The big Rigby grabbed the other Rigby by the arm and yanked him in, slamming the strangely light concrete door behind him.
Then the door opened and there stood a single Rigby. He looked at everyone, then walked up to the nearest Mordecai and said,
"Your turn."
Then the only Rigby walked over to a young raccoon, before picking her up and playing with her. Everybody turned away from the only Rigby in the room now, directing their attention now to the nearest Mordecai. The Mordecai closest to the portapotty coughed, then moved forward to enter it. Slowly the rest of the Mordecai's were doing the same thing the Rigby's were doing earlier.
"Great. At least this'll make things a little faster."
One after the other, groups of people were heading to the portaloo, some with reluctance and some with a little less reluctance, but all of them heading to the weird closet thing with a definite sense of doubt. Especially the Benson's.
Then there were just one of everyone. One Mordecai, one Rigby, one Pops, one Muscle Man and HFG and Benson and Skips and all of them. One of everyone. Suddenly the room felt really small without the heat of everyone else squashed together. The only ones that didn't go in the box were the kids of everyone and a select few, and strangely enough, they didn't have clones.
"Okay. Now that were done with that," Amias said, addressing the - now very small - crowd. "We can finally move on to the tour of my place. Which I'm looking forward to immensely."
"Amias?" Bronwyn asked out of nowhere, poking him on the shoulder. "Think I missed something. Someone."
"Who?" Amias asked bluntly. Bronwyn pointed at Margaret.
"Her kid."
"Which kid?"
"Uhh... Says here "Lacey Flower Quintel"?"
"Then get her here. Which one is this?"
"The ACG one."
"Okay, get the kid to Margaret."
Bronwyn rolled her eyes and looked over to Margaret.
"Margaret?"
The robin looked up.
"Put your hands out."
"O-okay..." Margaret slowly complied. Bronwyn looked at her, then a blue circle appeared above Margaret's arms, and out fell a small child, less than a year old. Margaret looked at the baby.
"Who's this?" Margaret quietly asked.
"Update her." Directed Amias. Another flash of blue appeared above Margaret's head, the circle going straight down on her, then leaving a stunned Margaret looking blankly at the baby.
"Ohygosh, Lacey!" Margaret brought the child close to her in a hug. "Mordecai, come here!"
"Who's that?" The bluejay asked.
"Do it to the rest of their family as well." Amias continued.
"Yeah, yeah." Bronwyn muttered, and flashes of light enveloped Mordecai, a young dark blue bluejay, a teenage robin the park family and a whole lot of other kids as well.
"So did you get everyone?"
"I think." Bronwyn said, answering her brother. "I'm to lazy to check again. I'll just do it whenever."
"Fine. At least I can move on." Amias once again turned to everyone below. "Okay, who's ready for the tour? I think it's time to get going. This way."
With that, Bronwyn summoned another flash of light below her feet, where she suddenly dropped through the rafter and disappeared. Immediately, another flash of blue light appeared right above the ground below around her height where she appeared, falling from and landing on the ground with a slight crouch.
Amias clucked his tongue and took a half step in the air to his left, above the rafter. His foot seemed to rest in the air, then he pulled his other foot in a half step above the air he was standing on. Then it looked like he was walking on a set of invisible stairs that went up above the handrail and came down straight behind the crowd.
"No need to show off," Amias said to his sister, patting her shoulder. Bronwyn shrugged his hand off. Amias sniffed.
"Okay, if we're all ready, I thinks it's time we do something more interesting. Follow me."
And with that, Amias and Bronwyn began walking to the far wall that seemed miles away, leaving everyone behind them thinking about what the heck was going to happen.
