Chapter 12 – Closer

Quick disclaimer: We're going to go through a big twist here. I hope that you all will bear with me and keep reading, but I won't blame you if you don't. I've been trying to hint at it but I still find it kinda weird myself ngl.

Not for the first time since I came to this city, I've found myself alone in a pitch-dark abyss. It's not some sort of oppressive darkness like the nightmares, closing in like a hungry predator seeking to swallow me up. It's just… empty.

My ears hear nothing, not even the beating of my heart or the blood rushing through my veins; my eyes can see nothing, not even a single part of my body no matter which direction I look in; I cannot taste, I cannot feel, and I'm only vaguely aware that I exist to begin with.

Suddenly a sensation comes upon me in the area where I assume my stomach would be, a feeling of weightlessness, as if I were falling at a steady, gentle pace. My feet touch down against an invisible floor, easing into a standing position as if I had been gingerly set down by caring hands.

I can almost feel myself returning to existence. One by one, I feel the bones building up my skeleton; then the muscles, and veins, and organs all coming together to reform my body—and then, out of nowhere, I can see myself again.

But still, that's the only thing I can see. A world of endless night closes in tight around me, black and eternal… and then, in the distance, I see an orange light leap up, like a campfire. My mind argues back and forth with itself on whether or not I should approach, but before a victor is decided I find my body moving of its own accord.

Each step seems to go nowhere. For hours I seem to walk, without making even the slightest bit of progress toward that light, but I press on. Something in the back of my head tells me that I have to reach it, filling me with an almost primal desire, like the first cavemen seeking shelter around a fire.

On and on I walk, and though one moment I find myself still so far away, I blink once, and I'm somehow halfway there. But now that I've gotten closer, the sense of urgency that drives me further toward the dancing flames in the distance becomes that much stronger. That little voice tells me that when I reach it, I'll find what I've been looking for all this time.

But… what is it that I've been looking for all this time?

The easy answer, of course, is everything I've found myself unable to remember, but it could be any number of things. It could even be just a tiny detail about my life, so insignificant that I'd have been better off ignoring my instincts and staying out here in the endless darkness.

I keep walking, heedless of the slight apprehension about what awaits me. Then I walk some more. And a little bit further.

Oh, and then I walk just a bit more, but this time I can actually see the fire getting closer. With each step, the bright flames become clearer and clearer, leaping and dancing like flickering orange ghosts.

Something in them reminds me of my Heroes—Heat, Lady Heat, and of course Nova Master; I can feel the warmth it puts off, fighting back the cold grip of night and practically enveloping me in a hug.

As I get closer, I feel them beside me. I can't see them, of course, but I know their presence as well as any, like how a child can pick their parents out of a crowd—except I couldn't pick my parents out if they were the only ones in the room.

Then I see the shape beside the fire, a form just a shade or two brighter than the darkness partially illuminated by the light. Since they are seated, I cannot tell how tall they are, but I can see powerful arms packed with muscles, and every now and then when the fire drifts one way rather than the other, blown by some nonexistent breeze, I spot a mop of purplish-gray hair tumbling down past their shoulders.

Before I realize it, I'm standing right behind this person, and the words issue from my mouth without even a moment of forethought, "Um… hello."

The person jumps in shock and whirls around, drawing a pair of two long knives that gleam silver in the darkness as if they were made of moonlight. They give off a little bit of light, revealing a small stretch of tanned skin on the right bicep—also showing off a tattoo of a black scorpion.

And the face… almost completely dark, but for an eyepatch with a glowing purple gem set on it in the shape of an x. But despite my inability to detect a face, the feeling is clearly there—shock.

"…Young master…" the person says, in a rather deep, yet somewhat slow voice that reveals them as a man. "Young master, is that you?!"

"I… uh…" I say awkwardly. How exactly am I supposed to respond to this when I can't place a name—or, for that matter, a face to place a name to?

He pauses for a moment, taking a second to sheathe his knives. "Of course… that's right, you don't remember me. That's why you're here now."

"What happened to me?" I blurt out. "Where am I? And how did I get here?"

The man chuckles slowly. "Good questions, young master. I cannot remember the last time you had a good question."

Was that… some kind of dig? It had to be, but I can't help but find this entire situation too baffling to find any sort of amusement from it. "Sorry… who are you?"

Another chuckle, this one laced with a deep, old sadness. "I've got a few names that once would have meant something to you… but for now, you can refer to me as Magure."

Magure, the name repeats in my mind, bouncing around in search of something to connect with. It bounces around quite a bit, as there's a lot of empty space in there, but finally it clings on to one idea—"Are you related to Mr. M?"

"Mr. M?" Magure repeats, his voice slow and deliberate. Everything he says seems to be said in a rather slow manner, as if he's pondering it at the same time as he's saying it. "Ah, yes, that's what he's been calling himself. I suppose you could say that, we do have a mutual friend between us. One who has been gone for a very long time."

He looks directly at me as he speaks about this friend; I can see a flash of a green eye in the socket opposite the eyepatch.

"Do you mean…"

"It doesn't matter what I mean. Come, young master, we've got quite a bit of ground to cover, and I do not know how much time we have together," Magure says, placing a large hand on my shoulder.

I look around at the endless darkness. It's still endless. "Where are we supposed to go? It's pitch black in every direction," I point out, waving my hand around at the unending void.

When Magure speaks again, I can hear a faint hint of a smile in his voice. "I'm surprised at you, young master. Haven't you realized by now that just because you cannot see anything, that does not mean it's not there? How many times have you spoken to Shapeshift without seeing him?"

He knows about Shapeshift? I ask again, "Who are you, Magure?"

"You'll remember me soon enough, I think. In time. But for now, let's go for a bit of a walk," he says, deflecting the question. He removes his hand from his shoulder and holds it out to me, and I take it hesitantly.

And then, the fire explodes into a wall of blinding white light.

When the light fades and my eyes adjust to not being assaulted by a storm of white, Magure and I find ourselves in the living room of a house. Not an amazingly fancy living room, like Mr. M's, but it's… nice. Extremely clean, but with the lingering feeling that there's very little 'living' done in this room.

The walls are painted a pale blue color, and are rather bare, ornamented with only three or four framed photographs on the back wall, while one wall is dominated by a large bay window obscured from the outside world by closed blinds. At the far end of the room, on the left wall, a doorway opens up into apparent nothingness.

It's furnished with an array of clean white couches and chairs, as well as a pristine black coffee table set with a large book on stars, all of which appear to have come straight out of the furniture store, and on the wall opposite the couches, a large television sits atop a blocky wooden entertainment system. A set of glass doors on the entertainment system reveal a collection of movies and video games.

Getting a closer look at the television, however, causes a bit of curiosity to rise up in my brain.

Though large, it isn't a sleek, flat-screen device like in Mr. M's house, mounted to the wall. This one is an enormous block, black with a slightly bulging screen and what appears to be a box extending out from the back of it.

Something about all of this seems weirdly artificial, yet beneath this phoniness there's a layer of familiarity…

"Magure, what is this place?" I find myself asking, taking a few steps toward the center of the room. The strong scent of an apple-cinnamon air freshener wafts through, carried on an unseen breeze and assailing my nose with the sweet, spicy smell. "I feel like… I've been here before."

"Shh," Magure responds, folding his arms behind his back and remaining in the spot where we had arrived. "Just watch, young master. This will all be very educational for you, I think."

I open my mouth to question further, but my thoughts are interrupted by a joyful shout from somewhere outside the boundaries of the room. I begin to approach the doorway on the left, still only seeing darkness beyond the threshold, but almost at once two young boys burst into existence, one chasing the other and both laughing and giggling as they run and leap onto the couch, which squeaks and groans beneath the sudden weight. I'm a little surprised that it isn't made of cardboard, with how fake this all seems.

One, a cheery youth with a wild nest of brown hair and stormy eyes, fumbles around the coffee table and picks up a remote, powering on the television, with pops into life with a crackle.

"Come on, it's gonna be on soon!" the other boy, an excitable little fellow with a fairly thick English accent, complains. Both of them seem to be, perhaps, seven or eight at most.

"Cool it, B! I've done this enough at your house, I know the channel!" the one with the remote shoots back.

"You just passed it!"

"No I didn't!"

"You did!" B insists, trying to grapple with the other boy for control over the remote. The television flashes rapidly through several channels, but finally B yanks it away from the other and flips it to an animated show about superheroes. "Are your parents really going to be okay with us watching this on the big TV?"

"Why does this all feel so familiar?" I say aloud, not really looking for an answer from any of the assembled company. "…Who are these kids?"

Before I can ask further questions, my eyes hone in on the television. On-screen is a man dressed in a blue and yellow jumpsuit, with a rat's nest of brown hair and a smirking, amused look on his face.

"Wait—is that…" my eyes go wide, and my jaw drops through the floor. "Shapeshift?"

In the back of my mind, I feel a dull, throbbing pain in one specific spot, pulsating intermittently, like someone striking a rock with a pickaxe over and over again.

"Not quite Shapeshift," Magure says quietly. "That's the one you based him off of. He's called…"

"Morph!" I interrupt at once, the memories flooding back. "This is X-Men that they're watching!"

I hurry over to the couch and sit down on it, though the cushion doesn't move or make noise to even acknowledge my existence, and I join the boys in an engrossed trance, leaning forward on our hands with our elbows digging into our knees.

Magure seems a bit amused, but also perhaps a bit annoyed by all this. He pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs quietly. "He recognizes X-Men and Morph, but not himself…"

"Huh?" I question, tearing my focus away from the screen to look at the muscular man in the corner of the room, getting a better look at the guy who drew knives on me back in that endless darkness.

Bronzed skin stretches across thick muscles, left open to the air thanks to a sleeveless leather vest crisscrossed with bandoliers and armed to the teeth with pouches and pockets. His left eye is a dark brown, almost black; his right eye no longer exists, instead covered by that eyepatch with the x-shaped purple gem, causing me to wonder how he might have lost it. Shoulder length gray-purple hair shines lavender in the sunlight which peeks in through the blinds.

"That's you, young master!" Magure exclaims, pointing to the boy with the wild hair, who bounces with excitement every time the hero known as Morph appears on screen.

"You don't say," I comment absently, finding my eyes consistently drawn back to the television, but I'm quickly snapped out of my trance by Magure shaking my shoulder. Regaining my senses, I look down at the boy next to me, and soon see a bit of myself reflected in him; I've tamed my hair a bit since then, and of course I've gotten taller, but… I can't deny that he looks a lot like me. "No way… so we're in my memories, then?"

"You're just now realizing this? Well, I suppose you wouldn't remember what you looked like at this age…" Magure begins rambling to himself, before finally sighing and sitting down on the floor in front of me. "Oh, this is one of the first episodes, isn't it? I've always enjoyed the Sentinels…"

"Hey, Magure?" I ask after a moment, crossing my legs so that he can lean back against the couch.

"Yes, Ben?"

"Who's the other kid, then? Mr. M's grandson or something?"

"…No. Not quite, though you're on the right track," Magure remarks, giving the boy a sidelong glance. There's something he isn't telling me, but I'm not sure where exactly I need to put the pressure to squeeze out the information.

A commercial break loses my attention, both from myself and young me. "B! Look at this!" Young Me says excitedly as a commercial for some stupid award show comes on the air.

"What's up, Ben?" B responds, looking at him with quizzical eyes.

This is the first time I've gotten a good look at this "B." He seems to be shorter than Young Me, definitely shorter than regular-age me, with short black hair cut close to his head, though at the back there's the beginnings of a small spike jutting out. And in his deep blue eyes, there's a sense of immense intelligence, supplemented by the potential to become much, much smarter.

But what could "B" stand for? I know it, I have to know it—Young Me must certainly know it, after all!—but whatever it stands for simply won't click in my mind, and it nags at me like an annoying little dog biting at my pant leg.

Young Me rushes out of the room and out of existence, then a moment later returns holding a large sheet of printer paper. He presents it proudly to B, standing directly in front of the television while a commercial blares some loud, goofy song.

"I drew Morph!" Young Me declares, showing off the picture. It's surprisingly well-drawn for someone his age, and as I look over the creation that was no doubt the product of several broken colored pencils, I can't help but feel a swell of pride. I suppose part of me never really believed that I had created Shapeshift, until now. "Your dad let me use the copier, and helped me send it off to the comic company! You think they'll put it in the back of a comic book?"

B looks astonished. "You're a really good drawer, Ben!" he says, taking the drawing from Young Me and running his eyes over it. He looks down to the corner of the page, at a bit of writing, and furrows his brows. "What's this?"

"What?"

"Down here, in the corner," B explains, smoothing the page out on the coffee table and pointing to the words. They're written in a small hand, but it's too neat to be something I could have written at that age.

Young Me looks at it for a moment, smiles, shrugs, and says, "I have no idea! You know I can't read!"

"You were that old and you couldn't read?" Magure asks incredulously.

Older Me looks at him for a moment, smiles, shrugs, and says, "I have no idea! This is all news to me!"

Magure sighs. "I can't believe I'm bound to this one…"

I want to lean in to get a look at the writing B mentions, but the scene changes after that little exchange. The living room falls away, the walls disassembling into mere lines as the light blue paint fades to white and the furniture melts into the ground, which shatters like glass, leaving Magure and I standing in a world of whiteness.

"Where are we headed to next?" I ask Magure, looking up into his exasperated face. Annoyed as he seems to be, there's a trace of a smile quirking at his lips as he stares down at the emptiness beneath us.

"Right next door, actually, and a few years ahead. You'd be about eleven now, I think," Magure replies as the world begins to reform around us.

What comes first is the distinct feeling of being upstairs. Perhaps you know what I mean, or perhaps not; there's some sort of different sensation that lets you know that you are in fact some height off the ground, and that's exactly what I'm feeling right now.

The room is not so big, much smaller than the living room of the last memory, but perhaps about as big as Yusei and Rally's tent back in the Satellite. A decent-sized bed is placed against one corner of the room, dressed with lavender bedsheets and a few plush blankets placed over them for extra warmth. Opposite the bed is a large wooden desk equipped with several shelves, each holding many books, notebooks and folders, all of which are meticulously organized and labeled so that nothing is out of place. A comfy leather desk chair sits tucked in, while a lamp with a posable neck is flicked on and pointed directly at the center.

Magure and I find ourselves standing at the doorway, looking in on the two occupants of the room. One, sitting on the bed, is very clearly myself; my hair has grown out a bit, and I've gotten taller, but I could recognize myself anywhere—the lack of recognition with six year old me notwithstanding. The other, seated in the desk chair, seems to be a more grown-up version of B, complete with the hair spike.

B sits hunched over the desk, scribbling furiously in a notebook as I chatter onto him about something. I'm apparently very excited, waving my hands in an animated manner as my mouth moves nonstop; soon the words begin to make sense as they pass through my mind, and I watch as Slightly-Older-But-Still-Young Me raise a card high over his head.

"Can you believe it, B?! They actually made him into a card!" I shout excitedly, cradling the card to my chest as I flop back down onto the bed.

"Shush, Ben! I need to solve this before the timer runs out," B hisses, only briefly raising his head to look over his shoulder at Young Me. Looking onto the desk, I can see a kitchen timer ticking away with fifteen seconds left.

"Oh, lighten up, will you? Haven't you studied enough?" Young Me complains. "It's our birthday, dude! Your parents are waiting for us…"

"I never realized that the two of you shared a birthday," Magure comments.

"I still don't even know when my birthday is," I respond. "Magure… who is this other guy? He feels so familiar, but…"

A devious smile comes across Magure's face. "You know him very well. Even better than you know me."

"But I don't really know you that well! Or, if I do, I don't remember!" I say harshly, feeling a bit frustrated by this guy and his eyepatch refusing to just give me the answers straight.

"That's the point of all this!" Magure replies. "So you can remember! Your memories aren't gone, they've been locked away—and I'm trying to help you retrieve them! But I need your help too!"

From somewhere beyond this room, a man's voice yells out, "Boys! Come on down, it's time for cake!"

B sets down his pencil, and sighs. The kitchen timer starts ringing at an annoyingly loud pitch. He stops it, but the incessant hum trills shrilly in the background as we stand and listen.

"Finished." B says tensely, standing up and turning off the desk lamp. He stretches and twists his upper body, sighing again in relief each time he moves. "You know, Ben, you should really be more concerned with your studies. You want to go to the Academy as well, but you hardly take anything seriously…"

Young Me stands up from the bed and throws his arms around his friend's shoulders in a loose hug. "B! If there's one night a year that you can relax, it's our birthday. I bet that Isengard guy you like so much has fun on his birthday."

B shrugs his way out of Young Ben's grasp. "It's Eisenstein, and no he doesn't. He's on the record as saying he studies Duel physics with every waking breath. If I want to catch up…"

"Even at that age he was so studious… I wonder what happened?" Magure says idly. "And you have a much better temperament when you have all your memories."

"Yeah, I bet." I grumble.

Young Me starts ushering B out of the room again, walking right through Magure and I as if we aren't even here. Of course, technically we aren't. Much of the conversation is drowned out by the still-present timer sound, but I'm able to catch the slightest bit of the conversation at the very end:

"Come on, bestest buddy. Oh, and you too, Bastion."

Bastion.

The gnawing pressure at the back of my mind sharpens painfully, causing me to yelp and earning a worried glance from Magure.

"Young master?" Magure asks, placing a hand on my shoulder.

I barely hear his voice, however. The name repeats itself, in many different voices and inflections. Bastion. Bastion. Bastion.

"Young master, are you alright?"

Bastion. Bastion. Bastion. The name won't leave me alone, coming back louder and stronger each time I try to push it out of my brain, joining with the angry racket of the kitchen timer. The screeching orchestra rips through my mind in a sort of insane melody, bringing me to my knees as I clamp my hands over my ears.

My eyes squeeze shut, and finally I hear my own voice joining in. Bastion. Bastion. "BASTION!"

When my eyes open again, Magure is gone, and I'm back in my room at Mr. M's house at sunset. Orange light fills the room with a sort of melancholy glow, coating everything in a brownish tone like an ancient photograph.

Dr. Pepper and Mr. M are both positioned near me, Dr. Pepper laying on the bed at my side, and Mr. M to my right, about to settle into a comfy-looking chair with a nice cup of tea. Mr. M is staring at me, eyes wide and mouth agape, and even Dr. Pepper seems to be surprised by my sudden awakening.

"What did you say, Ben…?" Mr. M asks in a soft, trembling voice.

As the shapes and faces begin to register in my mind, the world starting to make some semblance of sense again, my stormy eyes settle upon Mr. M, searching his face for something I am not yet sure of.

And that's when I find them: the tear-filled eyes of my best friend in the whole world.

"Bastion…" I repeat quietly. "How the hell did you get so old?"

SOOOO! Who was actually expecting that ending? Like I mentioned in the disclaimer at the beginning of the chapter, I've been trying to foreshadow this for a while, but I've even questioned it a bit. Sticking with it though, so as I said I hope you guys will be with me for the long run, but I won't blame you if you don't. But, uh, I'm honestly not even sure what else to say here, so I suppose I'll let you all make your decisions here eh?

Thank you guys all so much for your reviews, follows, favorites, all of the support is awesome and much appreciated. I do hope that you all will stick with me to the end, but if not, I'm glad you've come this far with me.

So as always, take care, brrrrush yo hair, I'll see ya when I see ya, PEACE~

~Chase

(P.S., Yeah, if you guys didn't realize already Elemental Hero Shapeshift is 100% based on Morph from X-Men lol. Hope the idea of Ben and Bastion watching X-Men wasn't too jarring)