Chapter 1 -Fellas, I think I dropkicked God
Hello! This is a start of a new fic thats been bouncing around the old noggin for some time now. As is the case, please review and follow! Constructive criticism is always welcomed, so feel free to share your opinion!
As is tradition, I don't own the characters or One piece. I just play in the sandbox that they're in.
Some people would describe Alex as enigmatic.
Those who do so have clearly never spoken to him.
He does his work and promptly hands in assignments on time, greets everyone with a silent nod, and is quick to retire to his dorm when unneeded. He seldom leaves his room for more than classes and food, and when he does, he always finishes his business quickly.
During group tasks, even when he's forced to socialize, with all that he says, most believe he has the personality of a piece of plain white bread.
He's not exactly rude, but with his resting bitch face, few try to approach the enigma that is Alexander Finch.
Which is always a good thing in his book.
But on the rare occasion where someone would talk to him for an extended period, they would find him to have a wicked sense of humor with a pendant for depreciative jokes. It's not that he's prefers to be alone, but he isn't really motivated to make friends, or even passing acquaintances.
Or so he tells himself. It's a lot easier than admitting that he's antisocial.
He's not.
He's just…. content with being alone.
That's why he still doesn't understand why he's still friends with her.
"You absolute nimrod! How? How are you doing this?!"
He doesn't think he's a masochist.
"Thanks for the vote of confidence."
"This doesn't make any sense! You shouldn't be able to do this, you… you imbecile-!"
Keyword being think. He should really start evaluating himself more. He has a many great deal of things to say to her (none of which are very polite,) so he doesn't understand why he's taking this.
"No, I mean it! Your grades are middling, you have no sense of social cues, and compared to me, you're an idiot! I have the best grades, I do all the extra credit and all the extra curriculum, and I'm one of the top students here!"
"Thanks. Go to hell."
"No, I don't mean it in a bad way! Compared to anyone, I'm smarter! That's just a fact!"
"…Are you asking me to hit you? Is this a subconscious need for pain? I refuse to believe anyone can be this tactless."
"No, what I'm trying to say is that I shouldn't be losing! I'm clearly better at anything academic than you, but how do you keep winning? You didn't even know how to play until two days ago!"
"Just one of my many traits."
She turns to him in disbelief.
"Alright, one of my vanishingly few traits."
"…"
"Okay, a single trait of mine."
"…"
"Fine, a trait that stems from just having a good poker face."
She slams her fists on the table.
"This is chess. There's no such thing as a POKER FACE in CHESS !"
"Maybe you're just bad at it?"
"Again, I can't be! Chess is widely known as a game of tactics, intellectual skill, and a strong mentality! I admit, your grades are above average, and you have some tact, but I still shouldn't be losing SEVEN TIMES IN A ROW!"
A small, sadistic side to him wonders what would happen if he tells her he still doesn't really understand how to play. He just moves his pieces in a way that makes her the angriest. Lost in sardonic thought, he is shaken to attention.
"I give up."
/-/
"I give up," Molly grits out.
And just like that, she watches his shoulders sag as he lets the remnants of his mask fall, letting out a weary sigh.
It never ceases to amaze her. A moment ago, his entire posture was rigid and unyielding, his eyes narrowed and unreadable, all emotion extinguished. His mechanical calmness gave her the illusion that no matter what she did, no matter how hard she fought, and no matter how much she struggled, she would still be dancing in the palm of his hand.
He calls it his thinking face.
Others… don't. They call him a psychopath.
She watches him uncurling from the chair. He's tall, but not tall enough to warrant the use of 'uncurling' so maybe calling it that wouldn't be right; but with the slow, languid way he arches his back and stretches out his tense shoulders, it's hard to describe it as anything else.
Then he falls out of his chair, and all illusions of him being this… mysterious stranger are gone. When he straightens, his knee hits the edge of the table (and rightly so, since he's six foot-too goddamn tall), and he falls right back onto his ass, hissing in pain.
Strangers believe Alex is an enigma.
Anyone the slightest bit familiar with him knows he's a complete and utter disaster.
/-/
Alex watches Molly leave, shaking her fist in fake anger, a hundred quid lighter. He smiles and flips her off in response, watching her laugh as he closes the door.
He makes his way back to the living room, swiping a cup of coffee from the kitchenette. It's not labeled, so it's fair game. Humming a jaunty tune, he makes his way to his room.
Flicking on the lights, he flops down onto the bed. Toeing the power button on his computer, Alex groans, turning himself to stare at the ceiling. Nothing about his life feels right. He briefly wonders if this is what a middle-age crisis feels like, then remembers that he isn't even twenty yet.
Still, for some strange reason, once reflecting upon himself, he feels his mood start to twist and blacken. He pulls up the scraps of elation from the game, surprising himself on how quickly his mood resets. It was the little moments like these that kept him in check. He could care less about the small stuff.
He hears the computer hum to life, and with that, the dark room is briefly illuminated. He turns to check his phone.
"Here's a straw."
He finds one hovering in front of him.
"What for? Wait… what the hell-"
"Because life sucks."
He whipped his head toward the voice.
He stared at the computer screen.
The screen stared back.
Alex likes to entertain the thought that as socially inept as he is, he still has a firm grasp on reality. He does not think what he is seeing is real. He is also a firm believer that when a computer has eyes growing out of the screen, as whimsical and fantasy-like as it is, some shock would be mandatory.
"EEK!"
He only thinks this to reassure himself that the pitiful squeal that made its way out of his mouth was a rational response to this.
Silence bled into the room.
"Seriously?"
And of course, as if the glowing eyes weren't weird enough, the screen started growing other appendages as well. White digits grasped at the edge of the computer, and a figure started pulling itself out.
" 'Eeks' are for small rodents crawling through your garbage, not for omnipotent beings that have their eyes poking out of your computer. C'mon, I'm worth a 'OMMAHGAWD' or 'SWEETJESUS' at least, right?"
"Oh hell NO!"
Straight out of a horror flick and into reality. He's seen enough films to know what's going to happen. Guy watches creepy ghost girl climb out of television, girl repays kindness by eating his face. So instead of standing there like some clueless idiot, Alex marches towards the cupboard and pulled out a broom.
Time to clean up the trash.
"BACK FROM WHENCE YOU CAME FROM DEMON."
"GEROFFME-"
/-/
His roommate returned drunk, finding Alex screaming and kicking into his computer.
The next few minutes was spent watching a bizarre battle between the boy and his computer, a battle which had no connotations, and seemed to run around the concepts of logic and fantasy, in which the boy was somehow losing against an inanimate object.
His roommate decided he hadn't had enough to drink, and decided to increase in his endeavours of slowly killing his liver.
/-/
"Thats my computer."
They stood over the smoking remains of said apparatus. Judging from the cracks, sparks and hole in the middle that led to another dimension, Alex was pretty sure he couldn't take it to the store.
"That was your computer"
"I had spent three summers saving up for that."
"Well, in my defence, you weren't exactly making it easy for me to talk to you-"
"You could have knocked. On the door. Like normal."
She (It?) waved off the question, pretending to act miffed.
"Yeah, but no one important uses the door anymore, and as you should know, they're meant for people with no imagination-"
He tuned her out. Needless to say, he was thoroughly underwhelmed on how god was. Maybe it was because most religions depicted him as an all-mighty being, and the only way to communicate with them were at the peaks of mountains, or some other hard to reach place where people could readily test that theory. Most gods perform acts of power, like gifting power to humans, parting the sea, or just other godly acts in general.
All he got was a whiny jackass who didn't know how to use a door.
The lack of 'thy's and 'thou's could have played a part.
"I don't care! The sign clearly says 'NO GODS ALLOWED. WE ARE ATHEISTS.' Like, it's right there."
Also, it didn't really help that all this god did was break his computer, terrorize him, and was now trying to shift blame back onto him.
"I'm not god."
Of course. 'Not god' could read minds as well. Definitely not god. Instead of replying, he flung himself onto his bed, turning to face the wall.
If he couldn't see the hallucination-
"HEY !"
-then it couldn't see him.
That was the general rule of acid trips, right ?
"I am NOT an acid trip, thank you very much !" It snapped, turning into a fluorescent shade of white.
White ? How the hell-
Inwardly, he cursed his feeble survival instincts, losing over his curiosity. He turned towards the acid trip for the first time, taking a good look at the source of his current problem.
"…"
His poor, poor retinas.
Wrong. It was a mistake. Something gnawed at him, the wrongness of… everything. The feeling devolved deeper into his mind- his soul, screaming at him on how this was an abomination of his reality. Whatever it was, it didn't belong here.
He took out a paper bag.
The figure was white. That was it. It wasn't a pure enlightening white, nor was it a blinding one. It was white from the lack of, … anything. It seemed like its white was from nothing, moulded into reality.
He started breathing into the bag.
If the figure was white, then its cane was certainly black.
If the figure was the void of any stains, its cane was the void of purity. The lack of light contrasted starkly with its owners lack of darkness, turning everything else irrelevant. It was a gaping void, or to be blunt, a hole.
And with it, the absolute emptiness of everything came crashing in. The hole had its ethereal chains wrapped around him, pulling him in-
The room was quiet for quite a long time after what was a reasonable amount of laboured breathing.
A presence takes its place before him.
"You alright there ?"
It was not alright.
The paper bag was not enough. He passed out.
It's a small start, but I like it. This has been edited by a friend of mine, who's fanfiction name is FireLark. Check out her stories! She told me not read them, and I won't, but that doesn't mean I can't ask others to do it for me!
As always, review and follow!