Starwell-Hannah Forbes-awoke with a startled yelp, sitting up straight and flinging the covers aside in a flurry of movement. Her left foot hit the solid, wooden floor beside her bed as she looked around at her surroundings with widened eyes. Her heart seemed to thunder like a dozen horses within her rib cage as she tried to get her bearings.
She was...
In a bedroom?
She blinked several times. What was the last thing she remembered? What had she been doing? "...M-Mouse?" she said aloud. "Bob? Matrix?" There was no response.
Then slowly, very slowly... she began to realize something. This room was very familiar, even if it was a place she had not seen for a long time. It was... the bedroom she was staying in at Uncle Frank's and Aunt Marge's house.
This caused her to blink yet again.
Slowly and cautiously she swung her other leg over the edge of the bed and stood, eyeing her surroundings very carefully as one would when expecting it to be a trick. She took a tentative step forward, glancing about as though the entire room could shatter into oblivion at a moment's notice.
"This can't be real," she said aloud, shaking her head furiously. It just couldn't be real. This had to be a dream-
Then it hit her. The sudden realization felt like a sledge hammer had slammed into her skull. It also made her blood chill in her veins. Had everything she'd experienced in the Net, in Mainframe, been... nothing but a dream? All of it?
Had all of the things she'd been through been fake, merely a figment of an overactive imagination within her subconscious mind? What about the friends she had made? What about... all the bad stuff that had happened?
Well... at least it meant that the bad stuff had never happened, then. She hadn't destroyed any lives, or anyone's homes... she didn't really have an angry, red-haired Guardian chasing after her, and she had never been infected with a weird, ingame werewolf curse. Best of all... she didn't have to bear the guilt on behalf of Userkind for the damage done to systems every time a User won a game.
This relief swelled in her chest until it became near joy, accompanied with the relief of being home-back to a normal reality-and realizing that all of those things had never happened. The only things which brought her some regret and sadness were just the fact that those people weren't real. Bob, Matrix, Mouse, AndrAIa, Little Enzo...
...Gizmo...
She let out a soft cry when she thought of that annoying little companion. A quick glance at her arm confirmed that the Keytool wasn't there. She continued to look around in case it had fallen or flown off somewhere on its own (Gizmo did have quite the independant streak, after all) but she didn't see it anywhere.
Her phone... her phone would be where she left it last. And if Gizmo hadn't become a Keytool...
She scrambled back to her bed and snatched her purse from the night stand, thrusting it open and searching inside of it. Her fingers quickly located the familiar flat object, red with dark green trimming. She turned it over in her fingers, releasing a small sigh through her slightly parted lips as she shook head at her cell phone.
"If none of that stuff happened," she murmured thoughtfully as she continued to turn the phone over in her hands, "how did I imagine you becoming a... a Keytool?" There was no response from the lifeless, electronic device. She impulsively turned it on and waited a moment for it to boot up. "Gizmo?" she whispered, as if wanting to be sure it really was just a regular cell phone.
The only response it gave was a light beep that indicated she had an unread text message. Otherwise, nothing.
She shut it off and, after giving it one final and thoughtful look, she tossed it back into her purse. "Well, I guess that's that," she muttered.
Starwell-no, Hannah-stepped away from her purse and decided to head out in to the house for the first time in what felt like ages, but apparently had only been the first time in about eight hours. She slowly opened her bedroom door and crept out into the hallway. It looked exactly the same; the walls were still brown, there were still pictures of her, Greg, and her aunt and uncle all over both walls. There was still thirty-year-old carpet beneath her feet
.It really was a dream, wasn't it? Nothing had changed here.
Hannah headed for the kitchen next, passing through the entryway on the way there and noticing, again, that everything was exactly the same. She strolled in to the kitchen, a bit more at ease than when she first left her room, but she stopped once she got inside the room.
It took her a minute to realize what she was looking for. Where was the cereal, again?
"Upper cabinet on the right...I think," she muttered to herself, stepping to the left side of the room and reaching at the cabinet door that was just a few feet above her.
She grabbed the cereal she wanted, Lucky Charms to be exact, and then went over to another cabinet to pull out a bowl. Soon enough, she was pouring cereal into a bowl, followed by some milk to top it off.
"Real food," she muttered. It was the first time she had seen it-well, in eight hours or so, actually, but it felt like longer.
After she was finished, she put the cereal and milk up, and sat down at the table to enjoy her breakfast. As she lifted the spoon to her mouth, filled with cereal and milk, she stopped again, taking it in for a moment. She then shoved it into her mouth, savoring the taste.
"Real food," she repeated with satisfaction.
She inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly as she continued to the next bite... only to hesitate and allow herself to sigh deeply again. That was another thing she had almost forgotten. Real air. Oxygen. Feeling her very organic lungs expand and fill with the unseen substance that every other human on the planet took for granted. She had no idea what people in the Net breathed instead of air... maybe it was some kind of air-like energy. Or maybe her body had simply adapted to emulate functions that her normal, organic body wasn't used to doing without.
She started to think of how it was possible that lungs were actually as useless in the Net as, say, an appendix when she tried to brush aside those thoughts. It really, really wasn't relevant anymore, not since it had all been just a dream.
And yet... why did it feel like she had just gotten back from a long, long journey, and a strange one at that? She wasn't entirely sure how the kids who went to Narnia felt once they returned, but... if she could wager a guess, she had to assume it was something like this.
She shook her head and focused on finishing her cereal. Sugar, milk, the feel of a real metal spoon in her fingers. She finished eating, and released another sigh of contentment.
When she finished, she drank the milk that remained in the bowl, savoring the taste. Yes, it had been far too long. She then wiped her mouth on her sleeve and scooted her chair back to stand, taking the empty bowl and spoon to deposit in the sink.
Then she decided to get a drink. She began to search the cupboard for a clean glass, only to find there were none. Where had they all gone? Were they in the dish washer? Surely they couldn't be... Aunt Marge had collected so much crystal and glassware over the years they practically never ran out.
Hannah wasn't sure what ended up making her open one of the drawers-that wasn't the place where glasses were stored, more likely silverware along with other odds and ends, but she did anyway. It was almost as if she had been drawn to it.
When she opened it, she did a complete double take. What she saw resting in the bottom of the drawer was...
Was that her icon? How did that get there?
Very slowly, she reached out and picked it up. How did that get outside the Net?
Upon turning it over in her fingers, she realized that it wasn't really an icon. No, it was a pin, like... a big button, the kind you would pin onto the front of your shirt like a piece of jewelry. That's all it was. But it was... peculiar. It looked exactly like the icon Mouse had given her. Two shades of blue, (midnight blue and sky blue, to be exact) coloring the shape of twin triangles forming the shape of a diamond in the center of a flat circle.
How did Aunt Marge and Uncle Frank get something like this in their house, something that was just like her icon from her dream...?
Hannah threw the button back into the drawer and slammed it shut, pressing her lips into a thin line. That was just too, too weird. Out of sight, out of mind. Maybe she was imagining things. Just... if she didn't think about it, maybe it would go away.
She knew that her train of thought was ridiculous. Icons weren't real, so why should this concern her so much? Maybe it was just the after-effects of a very detailed dream. She needed to get her mind off of that dream; maybe if she did, she would start thinking of it less and less.
She wasn't sure what to do. She had to think for a moment to remember what there was to do in this world, in her true world. Watch TV, maybe? No, it would make her think of Mike. Play a video game?
Wait, no, definitely not that.
"Maybe something outside," she commented out loud, taking another deep breath as she walked out of the kitchen. "Like a nice walk. Breathe in some more of this fresh, real air...see the birds, the cars, the people..."
Yeah, being out in the world would definitely get her mind off of Mainframe. It would thrust her back into reality and away from that dream. She was sure that it was common for people to have to do this kind of stuff after long dreams; she was no different.
She took off for her room, determined. Ten minutes later, she came back out with tennis shoes, shorts, and a t-shirt on; comfortable, clean clothes that were great to walk in. The sun was shining outside, so it looked pretty warm. The sun was a good sight for sore eyes, too.
Opening the door and stepping out, she again inhaled a deep breath. "Wow," she said, taken aback at how fresh the outside world felt. "This is...nice."
She walked off of her porch, a renewed sense of vigor, and headed towards the side walk in front of her house. She figured that a simple walk around the neighborhood would be enough to clear her head. As she began her journey, she focused on the noises around her; the birds chirping, the car horns going off in a distance, the sirens blaring through the city streets.
She also let herself take in the sights. Within her first several minutes of her walk, she passed several trees that were over twelve feet tall, filled with long branches and green leaves. She took note of the roses and lilies that decorated people's front yards. Mainframe had many sights, but it didn't have sights like that.
It was good to be awake again. It was good to be back in real life. Hannah chuckled as a squirrel ran out in front of her, with an acorn in hand, darting across the sidewalk. Nature was at its finest.
Hannah's walk became more confident by the second, as she settled back in to her world. She liked looking at the green plants and the green grass, she liked watching the critters of her neighborhood scurry around as they started another day. It really was relaxing.
As she continued along the sidewalk, she noticed a car approaching. It looked like a normal car; a blue Corvette, maybe a little older, heading her way. It was nice to see a real car again, too.
However, as the car came closer into Hannah's view, she came to a stop. The car almost looked like...
Did it have tires? Or was it...flying?
The cars in Mainframe flew; Bob had a car that flew. And this corvette, although it looked like a normal car, didn't look like it had tires like all of the other normal cars on Earth. Hannah could've sworn that it was just gliding through the air...
It finally zoomed past her, and Hannah finally noticed the four wheels on the car. She felt a wave of relief watch over her as she turned her head to watch it drive past. It was just a typical automobile.
Still, though...she really did think that it was flying for a second.
She shook her head and resumed walking quickly, keeping her eyes aimed forward. That dream must have gotten to her more than she'd thought, although it had been very, very vivid. It made her wonder what she had been eating before she went to sleep last night, to dream such a crazy adventure that seemed so real.
Hannah stopped at a crosswalk at the end of the street, frowning at the green lights. She jabbed her thumb into the button on the Don't Walk sign, hoping it would change and allow her to cross soon. She was never patient at waiting, but she didn't want to risk bolting across the street and getting run over, either.
While she waited, she saw a woman approaching out of the corner of her eye. someone who also wanted to cross the street. The woman appeared to be in her mid-thirties and she was pushing a baby carriage. Unlike Hannah, she at least had something to turn her attention to while she waited; the woman bent over the carriage and gently pulled back a green blanket to check on the baby.
What Hannah saw made her to a complete double-take. She could swear she had just seen a baby binome lying in that carriage, sucking on a pacifier. When she looked more closely, however, the only thing she saw was a perfectly normal baby. Impossible to determine the gender at that age, but nothing abnormal about it.
"Are you alright?" the woman asked, eyeing the teenager with concern. "Is everything alright, dear?" she repeated, when the girl didn't respond.
Hannah didn't realize that she was somewhat pale. After three very odd incidents in a row, though, it was obvious to her that something was wrong. Something was going on, at least it seemed that way. "No," she said after a moment, shaking her head furiously.
"What's wrong?"
"I'm going insane." Without another word, Hannah began to head in the opposite direction, abandoning her previous desire to cross the street. She went down an alternate sidewalk instead, as though wanting to find a way to outrun all of the weird, mysterious things she kept seeing that related to her dream.
She kept her focus straight ahead as she walked. She was walking faster now, wanting to put everything that had just happened behind her. Literally. She passed several people as she walked quickly; each one of these people seemed to just be strolling along, like it was a normal day.
"Okay, that one was normal," she muttered as a brown haired, middle aged man in a trenchcoat passed her. Next, a young, blonde haired woman in jeans and a t-shirt passed her. "That one was too. Good, good."
She rounded a corner to her left. She was not sure where she was going, but she kept walking. She spotted another normal human being headed her way; this time, it was a white haired man who looked to be in his fifties. He was walking a fairly large, brown dog.
"Normal enough," she said, before starting to smile at the dog. She needed to maintain some sense of sanity to the people around her. However, as she took another glance at the dog, it was not the canine that she had just seen.
It was Frisket. He had his red color, his exact size...
Frisket barked at her as they passed each other, and she shrieked.
Without looking back, she turned and began to run in another, random direction. She wasn't particularly afraid of Frisket, especially since he had never attacked her or anything (at least not in her crazy dream), but she wanted to get as far away from these insane occurrances as she could.
She ran as fast as she could, refusing to focus on anything except for the path right in front of her. She didn't look around and she tried her best not to look at anything at all; she just had to keep moving. Maybe if she could stop thinking of the dream entirely, she could make herself stop seeing these oddities.
When she came to the end of the block she bolted down another street, at the end of which lead to an open space. She found herself stumbling into a parking lot of some kind, full of parked cars. She placed her hand against the trunk of the nearest car for support, breathing deeply in and out as she caught her breath.
Slowly, tentatively, she looked around to see if everything was normal. She didn't even realize she was shaking as she braced herself, afraid to see some other coincidence from her dream. Or maybe it hadn't been a dream at all... had she been hallucinating the entire time? Was she still hallucinating slightly?
However, there seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary here. The blacktop pavement of the parking lot was perfectly normal, if a little cracked or upheveled here and there. Every single car looked fine, complete with license plates and decent tires. People were walking to and fro, either getting out of their cars or returning to their vehicles. And...
Then she spotted the building itself. It was Dot's Diner. There was no mistaking it. The big, red letters glowed brightly on the front of the building, and she could see what looked like Cecil moving about inside on his usual rail. The patrons looked normal enough, like regular people she was used to seeing everyday, but Cecil...
But there was someone else, too. Someone very familiar, with short black hair that had a greenish shine. His skin was green, and he turned to look out the window in her direction, as though sensing her presence.
That's when their eyes met briefly-and one of his eyes was golden, metallic.
She screamed at the top of her lungs and began to run, dashing across parking lot and nearly tripping over her own feet as she bounded back to the nearest sidewalk.
Home. She had to get back HOME. If she could just get back to her Aunt and Uncle's house, she would be safe from this insanity. She could lock herself into her bedroom and stay there the rest of the day. Maybe she could even go back to sleep and when she woke up again, everything would be normal.
She was not slowing down now. She ignored every single person that she darted past; she was not interested in seeing who was normal and who was not, she just wanted to get home. She scrambled through the sidewalks, turning corners left and right.
Finally, after about fifteen minutes, she was walking up her driveway. She let herself slow down and take a deep breath and walked on to her front porch.
She took her house key out of her pocket, and began to unlock the front door. As she finished and opened the door, her bed was the only thing on her mind. Bed, she thought, she just had to make it to her bed.
She walked inside and turned right to walk down the hallway to her room, but was stopped when she heard a voice behind her. "Oh, dear, you are finally home," her Aunt Marge said.
She had never been so happy to hear her aunt's voice in her life. Although, now that Hannah thought about it, why did Marge call her "dear"? She'd never been that nice to her in Hannah's entire life. Hannah turned around to greet her aunt, but froze when she saw someone completely different standing there.
A tall, thin feminine figure stood in Marge's place. She had red and black all over her body, and her limbs almost looked like a spider's. Her face was like a mask, with green eyes and a smile. She was holding a plate of cookies in her left hand.
It was Hexadecimal. Hannah was completely still as she stared at the insane virus.
"Welcome home, my dear. Would you like someā¦" Her green eyes and smile changed to red eyes and fanged teeth. "Cookies?!"
Hannah shrieked again.
A/N: ...April Fools. :3
