Flashbacks. That was all he had. Flashbacks. Flashbacks about a time, long past, in which . . . he . . . battled for something. But what? He couldn't remember. All he could remember was . . . a tree. A pine tree, with a shooting star beside it.
What was he? He couldn't remember. He couldn't remember his name, species, or appearance. He barely knew his gender, and he only knew that because he vaguely felt male. He supposed he could be female, too, but male was more comfortable. Familiar.
Can something be familiar if you don't remember anything?
The only thing he had to go off of was a statue in the middle of the woods. A statue of a one-eyed triangle with a top hat, arm extended as if to shake someone's hand. He knew that that was his physical form because A, he wasn't physical (he couldn't pick up anything and went right through the trees), and he had to have a body. Right? B, he couldn't go too far from it without being teleported back, and C. When he went inside it, he remembered. He knew he remembered, but forgot what it was like out here, and immediately came back out, where he forgot again. He had tried again and again, to no avail.
A thought occurred to him. He tried to ignore it, like he'd always done when it came up, but this time couldn't quite keep it out of his head.
"Am I dead?"
He hadn't even realized he'd spoken aloud until his voice reverberated back to him, as if it had gone all around the world without being heard.
"Am I even real?"
This time someone heard. Somebody paid attention.
"What?" A voice rang across the intangible void.
He was excited, for the first time he could remember. It took him a second before his mind supplied the word for the emotion. He was convinced his mind was full of infinite information, but only gave it to him when he needed it.
"You can hear me!" His voice was somehow filled with this emotion called excitement. "I'm real!" He paused. "Unless you aren't."
"Uh, I'm real. I'm just not convinced you are." That voice. It sounded like . . . a girl. In his excitement, he teleported to her without thinking about the distance. Pinpoint, teleport. It was like his body knew what to do. Wait, not body. Mind. It came to him then, in the middle of the Between (which his mind named immediately). He was a mind. Yes, yes. That was right. A mind. The mind of . . . something shifted in his mind. He was the mind of . . . and just as the biggest secret of his three-something day life was seconds away from revealing itself, he was there. The person there startled him so much, he reverted to something his mind was used to doing: Being dramatic. His eye appeared. Then the rest of his body. He bowed to the girl, automatically saying "Hello there. My name is . . ."
Why was he so startled? Oh, right. Because he was looking at Sixer.