This is Multikirby, broadcasting Chapter 8 of 'Window to the Past', directly to you! Yay!
Window to the Past
Chapter 8: Make Like a Tree
Daphne gave Vi an uncomfortable smile. They had been walking alongside each other for a while, and Daphne had to admit; it was in a very stark contrast to anything else she could bring to mind.
"So, Cece, where're you from?" Vi asked, giving Daphne another glance, before focusing on the footprints they had been following.
Daphne, once again, was presented with a question she didn't know how to answer. She stared at the ground a while, trying to come up with something to say. "I'm...It's east of here."
Vi's head shot up from the footprints and looked at Daphne again. "Sorry, could you repeat that?" she asked.
"I'm from the east," Daphne restated.
"The east?" Vi's mouth curled downwards in slight surprise. "Strange," she mumbled, resting her eyes on the ground in front of her again.. "I could've sworn you're northern, being the way you are..."
"What does that mean?" Daphne asked indignantly. When she didn't get a response, she huffed in frustration.
"Oh, did you say something?" Vi asked again.
Daphne shook her head, taking deep breaths to calm herself down. She couldn't allow herself to get riled up over something that might not even be derogatory. "Do you know where we're going?"
Vi bit her lip before replying. "I know as well as you do. These footprints are all I have right now. Though the way they're going, it looks like we're headed to Niccola Forest."
Daphne frowned. This was another thing she didn't know. "Would you mind filling me in on what that could be?"
"If you're from the east, you should know about it..." Vi pursed her lips. "But I'll tell you anyways. Niccola Forest is exactly what it sounds like; a forest. It's east of Niccola River, where I'm assuming you got your thing stolen. You said it was a journal earlier, right?"
Daphne nodded. "What did Tac steal from you?"
Vi smiled sadly. "It's not really anything you'd find important. When I get it back, you're probably just going to turn to me and laugh about going to so much trouble to get it back. But it has sentimental value."
Alice stared at the person in front of her. She instinctively brought the journal to her face so she could catch up on-
Where's the journal?
The girl was no longer looking at Alice, instead she focused on the road ahead of them. Alice's mind raced to get her up to speed on what just happened.
This girl looks just like me, except she's blue. We're probably the same species. We're walking somewhere. I heard 'sentimental value'. My journal's gone. Is she traveling with me? She didn't take my journal, did she? No, we're interacting too leisurely for that. Whoever came before wouldn't be this comfortable with-
"There it is, Cece. Niccola Forest," the girl said suddenly.
What's with her voice? It's kind of slurred...and what did she call me? Cece? Is that how I introduced myself? And what's Niccola Forest? Forest?
Alice, after a bit of deliberation, decided on the most inconspicuous question she could come up with to get some information. "What do you think we're going to find in here?"
The girl didn't respond.
"Hello?" Alice called, staring at her companion's back. "Hello? I'm talking to you!"
The girl stopped and turned around. "Sorry, did you say something?"
Alice blinked again. "Uh...What are we going to find in here?"
"I'm not quite sure. I didn't really think the plan out past this point if I'm going to be honest."
"Remind me what the plan was again?"
"It was to follow the footprints. And therein lies our problem," the girl finished.
Alice grinned sheepishly. "Pretend I'm an idiot."
The girl gave her another strange look, but seemed to dismiss whatever was bothering her. "The footprints end here. From this point forward, we're blind."
"You said you were hungry, right, Cece?" the girl asked. They had been searching the forest meticulously for any signs of disturbance.
"I think so," Alice said carefully. "Uh...this is going to sound awkward, but what's your name?"
"You forgot already?" she asked, laughing lightly. "It's Vi. But as I was saying. Some of these trees have fruit growing on them. I find that strange, since this isn't a rainforest or an orchard. But beggars can't be choosers. Keep your eyes open."
Alice nodded in conformation, and her eyes drifted to the canopy of trees above her. She hadn't really noticed at the entrance to the woods, but this place was stunning. The leaves were thick, but not too thick. They let light leak in from the outside world in the form of small beams. The sunlight that didn't make it to the ground level illuminated the thin leaves with a bright green hue. Alice marveled at how well the colours meshed with the browns of the trees, and the blue sky above them.
Not many people appreciate stuff like this, she thought to herself. Suddenly, she felt something sticky on her foot. Looking down slowly, she saw her orange foot bathed in a dirty brown mess.
"Ick!" she yelped, trying futilely to clean her foot off by shaking it vigorously while hopping to and fro on the other foot. This approach had her stumble into the exact mud puddle that caused the problem. "Agh, gross!"
Alice attempted wiping the mud off of her body, but her limited reach only allowed for the cleansing of her feet. This left her backside woefully filthy. Gritting her teeth, she lied on her back on the grass, and began to drag herself across the ground in a last-ditch effort to remove the grime. This was much more effective, and though Alice could still feel a few spots she missed, she was overall pleased with the result.
"Sorry, Vi. I had something to take care of," Alice said, attempting to use the back of her foot to wipe off a bit more mud. When she didn't hear a reply, she looked up. "...Vi?"
Vi was nowhere to be found. Alice groaned in frustration. "Vi! Are you here?"
She couldn't have gone far, she reasoned. That took two minutes, tops.
Alice looked again at the canopy. Maybe if she climbed up there, she could see better. Finding a low branch, she jumped and grabbed on before pulling herself up. The branch was thin, and bent under her weight, but Alice managed to stay balanced. Continuing her ascent, she felt leaves brush the top of her head as she climbed.
"Vi! Can you hear me?" she called. She began to scan the ground for any sign of her companion.
Which turned out to be a bad idea. It was a long way down. Alice's head spun from the sight of the ground far below her. Scrunching her eyes shut, she tried to convince herself she was back on the ground. It didn't work. Breathing faster and faster, Alice gripped the tree for all she was worth.
Toby felt hard bark digging into his hands and on reflex, he recoiled. Stumbling, he quickly realized he was on a very high branch on a very high tree.
"Why on earth am I up here...?" he mumbled, furrowing his brow. Looking up, he saw a couple of unidentifiable fruit. Remembering how hungry he was, he picked what looked like an apple. However, he didn't take a bite. Turning it around in his hands, he first made sure that it was, in fact, an apple. After that was confirmed, he took a bite. It was good. Really good.
It also happened to be the first thing he ever remembered eating since he woke up on that meadow two days ago.
As Toby's eyes drifted to the top of the canopy, he nearly gasped in delight as he realized the surrounding area was almost literally covered in apples.
"They're so...beautiful..." he whispered, his eyes beginning to water.
Toby sighed happily, leaning against the trunk of a tree. He lost count of how many apples he ate after fifteen, but one thing he did know was that he was full.
"Hey!" a voice from down on the forest floor called. "What happened to you? You just stopped moving, and I lost you for a while!"
Toby looked down and saw a blue mirror image of himself looking up at him. "Do I know you?"
The doppelganger rolled her eyes. "Not this again...Come down here, you aren't going to get your stuff back by hiding in the treetops!"
"My...stuff?" Toby asked, confused. "Sorry, but...I have no idea what you're talking about."
"There's...something wrong with you, Cece," she replied as Toby began climbing down the tree. "First, you're emotional. Then you're diplomatic. Then you're casual. And now you're apologetic. This might just be me, but every time that a switch happens, it's like you...forget everything I've told you."
Toby blinked in surprise. He'd seen her before? Or...she'd seen him, I guess. "Did you call me Cece?"
The girl groaned. "Yes! How could you forget your own name?!"
"My name's Toby, not Cece," Toby said quietly. "...but you can call me Cece if you really want to...I mean, I can't stop-"
Toby was interrupted by the girl walking straight up to him, gripping his head, and staring straight into his eyes. Shaking him lightly, she mumbled, "Anyone else in there?"
"Wait, none of them told you?" Toby was taken aback; if four of the others had been with this girl before, at least one of them had to have told her about all of them together.
The girl stepped back carefully. "Apparently, no. What am I missing?"
Toby twirled his foot in the grass uncomfortably. "This is actually...my first time telling anyone, so it might be a little clunky..."
"That's fine," she dismissed.
"And it might be a little hard to believe...and I'm sorry if I seem insane...but..." Toby trailed off, reluctant to say anything.
The girl stared at him intently.
He looked down at the ground, hiding his face. "There're five people sharing my body, and we kind of switch control at random, and we don't know what anyone else is doing."
No response. Shoot, he thought, wincing. I blew it. She thinks I'm insane.
He looked up reluctantly to face her. "I-I'm sorry, I'll just go-"
"Wait, you didn't say anything yet," she interrupted.
Toby turned back around to face her. "Y-yes, I did. I mean, I was a little quiet, but..."
The girl nodded in sudden recognition and began to smile awkwardly. "Sorry, I probably should've mentioned this earlier. If you want me to listen to you, I have to be able to see your mouth."
"That's a little weird...Oh, was that bad? Sorry." Toby asked.
The girl shook her head tiredly. "No, no, it is weird. I read lips to 'hear' what you're saying. I'm deaf."
"Multikirby," Chaos said crossly. "I can't help thinking that you're just throwing mental disabilities everywhere with wild abandon."
I scoffed. "Excuse me! Deafness is not a mental disability!"
"You know what I mean," Chaos retorted, rolling his eyes. "I'm just saying that out of all the characters you've introduced, four have some sort of-"
I stood up from the laptop on the table and ruffled Chaos' ginger hair through his protests. It was a little hard since he was taller than me, but I managed. "Relax. I'll be careful. And besides, this is my story, remember?"
Chaos grumbled something but didn't push the subject.
"Really?" Toby gasped. "Oh, I'm so sorry! What happened?"
The girl's smile widened a bit. "You say sorry quite a bit, Toby. But I'm not telling you anything until you tell me why you're...not Cece, I guess."
Toby gave an apologetic grimace but nodded. "It's kind of hard to explain, but there're at least five people in this body, including me. We sort of switch out and take control one at a time, and when one of us switches, we don't know what the other one was doing. That's what this journal is-"
Toby stopped and stared at his empty stub. "M-my journal! Did I leave it up there?!" he yelped as his eyes shot up to the canopy.
The girl looked at Toby in a very nonplussed manner. "You aren't joking, are you?" She whistled lowly. "Toby. Your journal was stolen by a thief named Tac. You ran after him really quickly, but you ended up losing him. You and I talked for a bit, and you looked like you were going to cry a few times. And then suddenly you turned into a diplomat or something. You introduced yourself as Cece, and we decided that we were going to team up to find Tac and get our stuff back. My name's Vi, by the way."
"Vi," he repeated. "Vi..."
Suddenly his face went as red as the apples he had been eating earlier.
"Okay," he whispered.
"I've told you about me, and about us. I still don't know that much about you. You said you have five people bouncing around."
Toby nodded meekly. "Yeah. There's me, Adrian, Alice, David, and Daphne."
"That's weird..." Vi said. "Though I think I've heard about something like this before."
"Really?" Toby exclaimed, jumping up a bit. "What is it?"
"Did you change again?" Vi asked suspiciously.
Toby blushed again, breaking eye contact. He shook his head. "N-no, I just got excited. Sorry."
"It's alright. But...out of the five of you, which one's the main personality?"
"...What do you mean?" Toby asked slowly. The question didn't make sense to him.
Which one of us is the main personality? What kind of question is that?
"Well, you have Multiple Personality Disorder. Your personality split and some other personalities came to be. But the one you had before's still there. Which one is it?" Vi asked.
"You're..." Toby shook his head in denial as the weight of what Vi was saying began to sink in. "You're saying I'm fake...?"
Vi's eyes widened even more. "Wait...you don't know if you're the main one or not? What, did you get amnesia too?"
Toby, blocking out Vi's words, sat down on the grass, his eyes staring off into nothingness. "I'm fake...? I'm not real...?"
Suddenly the world felt very cold. Toby began to shiver. Vi was saying something again, but he couldn't hear it. Fake people can't hear anything. Right? Something hard crashed against Toby's face, throwing him to the side.
"Listen to me!" Vi yelled, enraged.
Toby's eyes, now devoid of any emotion except doubt, stared blankly at Vi fuming in front of him. He didn't say anything.
"I'm not saying you're fake!" she shouted indignantly.
"...Okay," Toby whispered.
Vi sighed as she ran out of steam. "What I'm saying is...wait. Where are you from, Toby?"
"I don't know. I woke up two days ago on a meadow alone."
"Oh, you poor thing..." Vi breathed.
Toby shook his head lightly, his face heating up at Vi's words. "N-no, I'm fine. I'm alive, right?"
"No, it's not that," Vi said, shaking her head. "You don't know who the main personality is, you don't know where you're from...how much do you remember past two days ago?"
"I, uh...I have a father. That's it, I guess."
"You're one messed up kid. Do...do you even know...bah, of course, you do."
"Know what?" Toby asked desperately. "What do I know?"
"Well..." Vi trailed off. "It'd be kind of stupid if you didn't. But...you know what species, you are, right? I mean, you said you didn't remember anything past having a father, and I just thought for a bit that-"
"No, I don't."
"Oh," Vi said quietly. There was a new tone of pity in her voice.
"Do you know what I am?" asked Toby.
Vi nodded. "Y-yeah. You're what's called a puffball, I think.. Apparently, the first one of the species was called Kirby or something. But...yeah. I don't really know how to describe it to you other than that."
"Who's this first one?"
"Eh," Vi scoffed. "I don't think he exists, honestly. I mean, it was a long time ago, and he had these fantastical powers. For example, the ability to absorb the essence of people he ate and gain powers from them."
Toby made a face.
"Exactly. Oh, hey, before I forget," Vi said suddenly, "did you see anything suspicious when you were up there in the trees? Broken branches, things like that?"
Toby shook his head. "No, nothing more than those...delicious apples..."
"Wait, you ate them!?" Vi gaped.
"...Why?" Toby asked carefully, fear creeping into his voice. "Are they poisonous?"
"No."
"Venomous?"
"Apples can't be venomous."
"Will I die if I eat one!?"
"That would mean it was poisonous."
"So it IS poisonous!?"
"No!" Vi yelled in a mixture of annoyance and amusement.
"Then..." Toby sighed, exasperated. "Then what's wrong with them?"
Vi smirked. "They induce temporary insomnia."
"Insomnia? What...does that mean what I think it means?" Toby said, dreading the answer.
"If you think it means you can't sleep," Vi said, nodding, "then yes."
Toby groaned. "Ohhhh, nooo..."
"No point worrying about that right now. Not for me, anyways, because it's not my problem," Vi finished with a chipper tone, earning what looked like a sad attempt at a dirty look from Toby.
"Let's just go find Tac," he murmured, trying to hide the blush without turning away.
"You know, I think you're the only one I haven't familiarized myself with," Vi remarked.
Adrian gave her a glare. "What do you mean by 'familiarized'? I'm no exhibit."
"Well, you're definitely different from Toby, that's for sure," Vi said, seemingly ignoring Adrian's comment.
They walked in silence for a while, when Adrian spoke. "How far are we from this 'Tac' thief?"
Vi walked on, paying Adrian no regard.
"Hey, I'm talking to you!" he said sharply.
Still no response.
"Fine. Just ignore me. See if I care."
Suddenly, Vi stopped. Crouching down on the ground, she examined the grass closely. "Hmm...I think this is his...but this is the only one."
Adrian was about to raise a question, but stopped when Vi answered it for him. "We're really lucky, Adrian. Tac had been traveling through the treetops since he got into the Niccola Forest, so he didn't leave any prints. But this here," she pointed at the ground in front of her, "is the footprint where he touched down. This could mean a couple things, but I think the most probable solution is that his hideout's nearby."
"I hope so," Adrian said lowly. "I'm sick of this forest."
"You've only been in it for the past ten minutes," Vi pointed out. "I've been in it all day. Don't eat that."
Adrian dropped a fallen apple he had been holding. "What's wrong with an apple?"
Vi's back was turned as she examined the trees for some sort of a hidden switch.
"Hey! Stop ignoring me!" Adrian yelled.
Vi turned around suddenly, as if realizing something. "Were you saying something?"
Adrian's shoulders heaved in rage. "No...everything's just...peachy."
"Oh, okay. But if you do say something, make sure I'm looking at you when you say it," Vi advised. "I'm deaf. I need to read your lips to understand you."
A figurative anvil came crashing down upon Adrian's head. She was deaf. Great.
"Oh, hey! I think I found it!" Vi exclaimed, pulling a small handle-like vein of the tree in front of her. To her right, the grass slid aside to reveal a hole with a ladder.
"Let's go," Adrian said as he started climbing down.
Vi stopped him. "Hold on! We should have a plan before we get down there. We don't know what's waiting for us."
"So we make up a plan based on us knowing nothing?" Adrian said skeptically.
Vi gave him a small grin. "I was thinking more along the lines of...'Tac'tics."
"That was terrible."
"I thought it was pretty good."
"You just ruined all of the suspense," Chaos stated.
"And you just ruined a good end to the chapter," I retorted. "Now we have to do this awkwardly."
"Awkwardly?" Chaos asked.
"Awkwardly," I confirmed.
We both stood there awkwardly until the text stopped recording what we were doing.
"Just end the chapter already!" I yelled.
More awkward standing.
"Thanks, Chaos," I mumbled.
"You're the one who keeps saying stuff!"
I think that's awkward enough. Don't you?