Chapter 32: Where We're Happy

"This is for you."

"Huh?" Moustache said as she turned to Voice. "What do you mean?"

"I'm giving this to you." Voice said as they handed her something. She looked down into her hand to see a metallic object.

"Is this...a Badge?" Moustache questioned.

"Yes." Voice nodded. "I understand you were frustrated about not being able to fight well in Subcon. So I made this to help you. I...put a lot of thought and work into it, so I hope it's okay."

Moustache raised an eyebrow. "Since when did you become all mushy? Wait, are you feeling sorry for me because I cried? You better not be!"

"I'm just trying to be a good Rookie." They shrugged. "Besides, it'll be useful for Alpine Skylines."

"Fine. I'll wear it, but only because you're being SOOOOO insistent." She mumbled as she pinned it on her cloak, next to her giant coin.

"I'm glad. It looks good on you." Voice nodded.

"Of course it does." Moustache nodded. "...Thanks, Voice."

"No problem." They said.


Voice wondered why they were thinking about that moment.

They were...awfully reminiscent lately.

"Shouldn't we be going to Nyakuza about now?" Moustache asked, staring out across the docks of Mafia Town. Since the Mafia goons fled in fear of Voice the two of them could wander around town freely. "We've been everywhere else."

"Nyakuza is difficult and dangerous to get into." Voice told her.

"So what? Just teleport us there!" She argued.

"Our dimension is unstable at the minute. Teleporting long distances doesn't seem favourable. On the other hand, teleporting to other dimensions is more likely."

"Great." She huffed. "Still can't believe our world is all messed up space-time wise. That's so weird!"

'Well, you wouldn't believe me if I said it was because it's a ripple effect of something you're going to cause.' Voice thought.

'I wonder...' Voice's thoughts went further. 'Will it be the exact same thing as so many others...what you do? I'd like to think it would change a little...just as some proof that I've helped SOMEONE at least. That I've helped you...'

"I suppose none of it matters at this point anyway." Moustache sighed. "We'll just wait until THEY'VE collected all the Time Pieces in Nyakuza, then WHAM! We snatch all of them right from under them!...You can still teleport us to the ship, right?"

"I will. Promise." Voice nodded. 'I can only hope this instability lessens...


Green Clean Station was...well these names were pretty literal; it was green and clean. Those cat Roombas were everywhere which was good for bouncing on at least, and it didn't take long until-

"HOW do you get any business?" I questioned the cat selling the green Tram Pass.

"What do you mean?" They asked all-too-innocently.

"Your shop is on a street located 50 feet in the air!" I gestured behind us to the rest of Nyakuza below us.

"If you go this way, you get the pass, simple as." The cat shrugged.

"Tie, you really need to stop questioning these things." Hat tutted as she bought us two passes.

"This planet is impractical." I mumbled.

"Will buying some cosmetics cheer you up?" She asked as she pulled me over to another vendor cat.

"I guess..." Curse our species weakness for ultimately pointless but still desirable appearance changes.

We both bought a Colour and Flair each. The Flair I got was for my Bat Bow, which turned it into a pair of shoulder pads of all things, which had three spikes on each of them as the pads themselves were black and shaped like cat silhouettes. Giving it a test run the spikes actually extended and formed into 'wings' that looked like exhaust ports off of a motorbike and produced flames like the jetpack.

"Hey, Tie!" Hat interrupted me, and I turned to see her clothes had...taken on a pizza colour, with pepperoni. "It's pizza time."

"Oh, ha, ha." I sighed. "What did I get then?" I dreaded the outcome a bit as I opened it. What I got was my jeans becoming pumpkin orange as my coat became dark purple with little light purple candy shapes dotted all over it. I switched to my tie to find it had become black and red striped.

"We're a theme!" Hat marvelled, her smile behind her mask obviously widening.

"Hey, we can't have people and or cats thinking we're similar." I denied.

After that, we managed to find another Time Piece, only for the exact same thing to happen again; the cats came and retrieved it from us as we had to trudge aftewr them back to the jewellery store.

"This is beginning to suck..." Hat huffed as we followed.

"C'mon, Hat. It's almost the end of the day, anyway." I tried to assure her,

"Huh? How do you know that?" She questioned.

"Their are clocks all over this place." I pointed out and at the various cat-themed clocks dotted all over the walls. "It's almost 5pm."

"Really!? Wow, time sure flies fast around here." She admitted.

"That and you-I mean we got distracted a lot collecting Stickers and Pons." I added.

We headed into the jewellery store. Hat was better at hiding her true feelings this time around.

"Another one? How wonderful, this is going just perfectly, isn't it?" She seemed to be asking us that with a hint of spying as she handed us more green tissues.

"Are you enjoying my Metro so far?" Hat opened her mouth to respond. "A lot of people end up here you know. But I bet you both would know all about that, hm?" She shut it again. "You've earned yourself a place here, under my courtesy. I do hope you take full advantage of everything it has to offer." The Empress seemed to be eying the stickers stuck to Hat's weapon and my clothes.

We nodded dumbly, and took that as our cue to leave.

"Wow she is scary...!" Hat whispered as we exited. "I'm ready to head home for the day."

"Same, admittedly. Let's find an alley where we can teleport back discreetly." I suggested.

We found an alley where no cats were skulking around and slinked in.

"Alright, back home for the night." Hat said as she pulled out her button and pressed it.

Nothing happened.

"Huh?" Hat pressed it again. And again. And again. "What's...? Tie, try your button!"

I took my own out and pressed it, nothing.

"What's going on?" Worry was creeping into Hat's voice. "We can't be out of range, we were able to teleport back from under Dead Bird Studios! So why...!?"

She then stopped. "Seller mentioned...that our dimension was currently unstable...is that preventing us from teleporting? But...but if we can't teleport back, we don't know how to get out of here normally! Does...that mean...?"

She looked at me, and she actually looked scared. "Tie...we're stuck here."

"...Seems that way." I admitted.

"We can't go back...we can't see Bow, or Roombi, or CC, or Knit, or Boss...we can't go back to our home...to our friends..." She was trembling.

"We'll figure something out." I tried to reassure her. "For now...let's take the rest of the day off and try to rest, okay?"

"Yeah, okay." She nodded, though clearly crestfallen.

We went to another food truck to get some dinner. I got myself some Shoyu Ramen and a hot chocolate whilst Hat got The Metro Special (Which was basically just some rice with egg on top) and an ice cream sandwich.

"You're taking this too well." Hat muttered with a mouthful of egg.

"Not well. Just from experience." I told her before slurping up some noodles. "The thing about not having a concrete home to return to, is that you have to keep moving until you find somewhere comfortable, and consider yourself fortunate if you have currency, and seeing as we have a lot of Pons, we're alright." I took a drink of my hot chocolate. "Besides, we have Hammerspace. Essentials can be limitless if we know where to look. In a place like this, even if we're not as comfortable, we're set."

I then slumped back. "But the truth is, I miss everyone as well. I'm worried about Knit, thinking how Bow's condition is, and scared that something will happen to them, especially with all this distortion going on." I ate more noodles.

"Sorry, I guess I wasn't being too thoughtful, huh?" She huffed.

"Actually, you're the only person I'd tell something like this to. Comfortably, at least." I added. "So I'm glad you said something, in a way."

"...Then I'm really worried too." She admitted.

"I know." I nodded.

We ate in silence for a bit when Hat looked up.

"We should try sending a letter to them. So that they don't worry." Hat suggested.

"Maybe a letter will work." I figured. "They are pretty powerful. Hold on."

I pulled a paper and pen out of my Hammerspace and we wrote a quick letter to everyone to let them know we were okay.

"Let's put a picture too." Hat suggested as she put on her Camera Badge.

"Hat, we've got to smile so that they don't worry." I reminded her as I adjusted my glasses and fish toothpick.

"I know. I'm an expert smiler." She reassured me as her camera popped into existence as she held it out. "YOU have to smile."

"Got it." I nodded, before she took the picture.

She pulled it out and attached it to the letter, before pulling out an empty letter and stuffing our note into it, before writing 'Bow, Knit, CC, Roombi' on it.

"I've got it." I reassured her, as I took the letter, waited for a train to come pass before I threw it into a crack between carriages and watched it sail off into the darkness. "Hopefully that will work."

After we ate, I looked around the main square until I spotted Felin wandering around.

"There you two are. What's going on?" He asked.

"Do you know a place we can stay for the night?" I asked.

"Nyeah, figured you'd ask about that. Clearly not from around here." He nodded. "Look, it's a bit too short notice for ya both to be renting out an apartment, but I know a place where you can be without being disturbed."

"That'll be good." I nodded.

Felin led us down into Bluefin Tunnel, past several areas where other cats were already sleeping with newspapers wrapped around themselves.

"They say a city comes alive up at night." Felin talked as we walked. "But since it's always dark down here, it's all the same to us, so no cats gonna give ya a bad eye if ya get a decent nights sleep."

We made several turns until we came to a thin, seemingly abandoned tunnel. It was completely covered in art, from the walls to the ground, in paint and spray. It was all anime cats of course, but it was also a wide range from cute little chibi kittens to flaming cat skulls.

"This place is a secret, so no mewling, got it?" Felin said, to which we both nodded. "Good, I'm only showing ya this place 'cause I like ya."

"Thank you, Felin." Thank you." We both said.

"Nyeah, I get it. Get a good cat nap, got it?" He said as he left us alone.

I found some paint covered cardboard we could use and laid it out as separate 'beds' for both myself and Hat for us to lie down on.

"I already miss my ship." Hat sighed, laying down on it.

"You and me both." I sighed. Never wanted to do this again.

"Can we really sleep like this?" Hat asked.

"We're going to have to. For tonight at least." I told her.

"I know. Doesn't mean we have to like it." She said.

"Nope." I agreed.

We laid like that for a little while, when I looked over at her.

"Hat? Are you cold?"

"No." She lied. She was burying herself in the hoodie and had her arms wrapped around herself for warmth.

I blinked twice, then reached into my Hammerspace.

"Here." I threw something over her, and she immediately perked up as she looked at it. A baby blue blanket with little multicoloured stars with happy faces all over it.

"What's this?" Hat asked as she immediately cacooned herself in it.

"It's my blanki-et. My blanket." I looked away with a blush of shame.

"I didn't know you had something like this." She admitted.

"It was from back on our planet. I've kept it in my Hammerspace all this time...I only took it out to wash it." I practically whispered.

"Don't you need it?"

"I'm fine, don't worry about me."

"...Tie." She had that serious tone. "How long were you homeless before we met?"

I looked at her quizzically.

"It's kind of obvious at this point." She said.

I sighed. "A week."

"What happened?"

"Why the sudden interest?"

"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

"No, no, it's fine, just..."

"I guess just something to talk about, really..."

"It's not the happiest story."

"That's you, though. And I'm okay with that." She reassured me.

I blinked, then resigned myself to it. "Everybody who came into contact with me, back on our planet, became unhappy. The same was true for my parents. Like everybody else, they didn't know how to handles sadness, it hurt them. And because I was their child, they felt it more and more...they just...couldn't understand it." I didn't mean to sound frustrated when saying that...

"Did they kick you out?" Hat wondered.

"No..." I shook my head slowly. "I...went through their things one day. And found photos, from before I was born. They looked happy in every one. Happy with each other, happy to be together. I knew it was my fault they were sad, and I knew, that if it continued...their marriage would fall apart. So I took that blanket and ran away. They were happily married before I was born, and now that I'm gone, they're happily married again."

"You did it to help them." She mumbled. "But still, Tie...to be all alone for so long...!"

"I admitted to myself that it was better that way." I told her. "That I was all alone, so nobody else would be hurt by me. Nobody wanted me."

"I'm happy you're my friend." She said that without skipping a beat. "More then that, I'm happy you're here with me, right now."

"That's the knowledge that comforts me." I nodded.

Hat laughed. "After everything we've seen, you're a teddy bear in comparison." She then looked upset. "It's unfair that you-"

"It's all relative, Hat." I told her. "Back there, I WAS the most evil thing. I DID do the most damage. And I don't think showing any of them the evils out here will do anybody any good. What matters is that I'm happy now."

"I'm happy you're happy." Hat nodded. "But, if you ever need any help at all...I'll help you. I'm your Captain, after all."

"Thanks, Captain." I nodded.

Hat made herself as comfortable as she could, wrapped up in the blanket.

"Goodnight, Tie." She said.

"Goodnight, Hat." I said as I nestled up against the wall and pulled the hood of my coat over my head for warmth.

...And of course it had cat ears on it.


Sorrow...

Doubt...

Self-hatred...

These were familiar feelings.

Only...they weren't mine.

I was standing in a white void, as these feelings seemed to resonate around me.

"This is the dreamscape..." I realised as I looked around. "Another dream? With the dimensional stability in question, I suppose this was inevitable. More importantly though...whose feeling like this?"

As if to answer my question, a pink portal opened up in the distance.

'Maybe I should've kept quiet.' I thought with a feeling of dread, but I still walked through it anyway.

"Of course it's Subcon…" I mumbled as I surveyed the dark forest. Never could escape this place. Only, it seemed a lot more scarier now...

Because this was Julia's Subcon. This was where those feelings were emanating so strongly from.

'Please no...' I begged the multiverse as I made myself walk towards the sensation I never wanted to feel again.

The loneliness and self-hatred were growing stronger with every step I took. More agonizing. More suffocating. It was becoming more, TOO personal. Reminded me too much. To the point I began to breath heavier as my eyes shook and those thoughts crawled into my head of 'Ugly, angry, sad, burden, misery, Misery, Misery, nothingbutapaintoeveryonearoundyouandeverybodywouldbebetteroffifyouwerejustdeadand-'

I stopped. Here was where it was strongest.

Julia was leaning against the other side of the tree I was facing. She looked...like a mess. Her hair was down, she was wearing some kind of space suit of all things, and her right eye was uncovered and glowing bright green, cracks forming in her skin around it. She was also clenching her hands together to vent out her anger against herself.

'Of all the people...' I sighed heavily. 'The one person I...'

It hurt. It hurt so, so much. To see someone who once gave me hope, to feel like what she helped me escape from. NOBODY should have to feel like that.

'I can't do this, I can't.' But I had to. I was the only one here, and she was suffering with something I knew painfully well. She'd helped me, now I had to help her. I wanted to! But it was still difficult to endure!

I switched from my glasses and fishbone to my regular tie as a form of psyching myself up, and carefully walked around the tree.

"Julia?" I asked quietly.

Her head immediately snapped towards me as the green eye glowed an angry intense green whilst she leaped back out of shock.

"Sorry! Sorry!" I immediately cried, raising my hands.

"...Tie?" She questioned.

"...Hiya." I waved awkwardly.

She suddenly gasped as she grabbed at her glowing eye in frustration, and seethed as it faded away.

'She's in a lot of pain.' I thought sadly.

"Tie, are you really...why are you here?" She was keeping her distance from me.

"I-I can travel dimensions now. With my new Neckwear. But this is a dreamscape version of me right now." I blurted out. Thought it wasn't the best idea to tell her I followed her negative emotions. "A-Anyway! What are you doing here...all alone?"

"Staying away from people." She spoke all too truthfully. "A lot has happened. Too much is out of my control and I'm...I'm scared of what's happening. I thought that, things would be better, now so much was behind me. But it just...keeps getting screwed up. And it always feels like it's my fault somehow."

This was horrible. It was the first time we were properly talking. We should have been talking about other things. About ourselves. About our own Hat's. About Knit, and Gabriele, and people the other hasn't met yet and about how we'd love to introduce each other. To finally say what I wanted to tell her ever since that day. Not this. Anything but this.

"Is Moonjumper with you?" She suddenly asked, hopefully.

"Moonjumper?...No." I admitted. "He left before I got the hang of travelling. Time is a bit unstable between our dimensions so...he might be late."

"Oh..." The disappointment was evident. This wasn't going anywhere.

"Julia. I want to help you." I told her earnestly.

"You can't help with this." Julia shook her head. "It's what I've become. I can't change it. I hurt people. And I could hurt a lot more. It's better if I'm just...alone."

"That's not true!" I denied. "You think that accepting that will help you cope with it, but it won't! It just becomes a lead weight on your heart that hurts more and more every day you say that is all you are!"

"And what's the other option?" She demanded. "Go back...and have everybody afraid of what I'll do next? To constantly be fearful of hurting others? To be helpless as people I care about get taken, or worse, killed!? And be unable to cope with that to the point I do something I'll always regret!?"

Her eye flared up as a tree behind me was smashed at the root and it collapsed to the ground with a horrible groan and a crash. I didn't flinch.

"I couldn't bear that..." She huffed as her eyes glow faded away. "So it's better, if I do things alone."

Things were quiet for a moment.

"I understand it."

I looked up at her. "I understand what it's like...to be scared that all you do is hurt everybody around you. That all you do is make things worse for everybody else. That for everybody else's sake, you're better off being alone...or dead."

I took a deep breath before speaking. "Back on my home world...I was different from everybody else. I was cautious, whilst everybody else was happy. That cautiousness turned into fear, and that fear turned into sadness, and anger. Everybody who came in contact with me...became unhappy. Something nobody there wanted. I 'hurt' everybody I touched. I was called Misery, nobody wanted to even know me. The worst part is that they were right to do so. I was the one oddity."

I was holding back tears. "But even during all that...I truly didn't want to hurt anybody. I didn't want anybody else to feel sad, to feel how I felt. So I ran away. I hid, alone, and tried to bury those emotions. But the more I was alone, the more it hurt, the more I hated myself. I felt like I was a lost cause. That all I would ever do is poison everybody else. I...I wanted to kill myself so nobody else would feel like me."

I sniffed like a pathetic child and wiped away my tears. "But then, one day, I just had this feeling. This...idea, that somewhere out there...was a woman named Julia. Who did amazing things and managed to overcome a lot of obstacles, to fight for a place in this world. And that thought was all it took to help me keep going. Not heal, but keep going."

I walked up to her. "Julia. Everybody hated me back then. But you...you have a lot of people who care about and love you. I know that for sure. Being alone forever isn't the answer, and it's going to take a while to love yourself...I'm not there yet...but they'll want to help you. And so do I. No matter how bad things get with you."

I smiled weakly. "Because I'll always want to be your friend."

It took a moment, but Julia kneeled down to be eye level with me.

"You're a really good kid." She choked a bit as she smiled. "I wish we could have met sooner."

"Yeah..." I nodded.

Just then, I gasped as a portal opened up underneath me and I fell.

"Tie!" Julia grabbed onto my arm and hung on.

"I'm out of time!" I cried as the pulling became stronger.

"I can guess! But, I wanted to say thanks." She told me.

"That's alright." I nodded. "Hey, if you ever need my help, I'll come and help, okay?"

"Same here." Julia nodded.

I then slipped out of her grip and was pulled under.


Tricky Treats: A festive little colour scheme that dresses Tie up all ready for Halloween.


And that is the next chapter, done! A bit quicker then last time, eh?

This chapter focuses more on dimensional instability, as well as characters views on where they belong, who they belong with, and where makes them happiest. Also got some more Flairs, Colours, and a run in with Julia based on her latest chapter, thank you again for proofreading that part!

And thank you to Konan720 (again), Mr. Mega1423, Max waspace, TheCakeIsAEye (Around 35 at this point I reckon) and ScalchopWarrior for reviewing!

See you all next chapter!