Chapter Text
As most stories go, it was a regular Sunday afternoon on call with the homies — Or at least as normal as it can get on a discord call.
“Okay, everyone’s on. We’re all on, right?”
“Yeah.”
“The fuck do you mean “Yeah.”?? You don’t even have a PC.”
“I’m on, trust.”
After nearly FIVE YEARS of annoying the shit out of their friends, they managed to get them all into playing Subnautica, and were currently all booting up Nitrox for another gaming session.
Not without difficulty though, apparently.
“Swaaag. Okay so recap, we got everything we need to get down to the lava zone: Max depth upgrades, blue tablets, water bottles…”
“Marblemelons.”
“Myth I swear to god, if you put a shit-ton of marblemelons in the cyclops lockers and have them all rot in there, I will actually get you.”
“I’m getting Shadow booted up but I will be on soon!”
“Okay swag!! Shane are you on yet?”
████ waited a moment for an answer before speaking again at the lack of response.
“Shane, are you dead? Did your PC poop its shit?”
“POOP ITS SHIT.. Quoting that.”
They all hear the join call noise.
“My PC fucking crashed again.”
“Oh rip.”
“WOW OK. You know what Shane, we'll play PC doctor later and hope it doesn’t shit itself until then.”
“I’m genuinely so confused on what the fuck is wrong with it.”
“We bond over PC issues… Anyway, are you on or?”
“I’m still rebooting my PC, give me a year.”
“Oh. I may be stupid.”
“No, you are.”
“MEAN TO ME..”
████ continued to bicker for a while before eventually everyone hopped onto the server, where they immediately sat themselves down onto a bench.
“I gotta go afk for a second, gotta use the bathroom.”
“Alrighty!”
“Good luck, have fun.”
████ Snorted, muting their mic before getting up from their desk, letting out a sigh as they grabbed a piece of gum for themselves.
Why do they always get anxious at the absolute worst times ever?? They just wanted to play the funny water game and now they’re getting heat flashes, this is so not swagtastic.
Holding their breath as they walked to the bathroom (which was admittedly not how breathing exercises worked, but fuck it, holding their breath was easier), they jittered the handle, it didn’t budge.
Locked, sister must’ve forgotten to unlock it again..
Frowning slightly, they grabbed the small, flathead screwdriver they kept on their sink for this very reason — jimmying the thing in the small hole before finally getting the angle right and twisting the lock back open.
The door finally unlocked, they placed the screwdriver back onto the sink counter before stepping inside and locking the door.
They stayed in there for a lot longer than they’d like, before eventually finishing up and stepping out back into their room — They didn’t really feel any better than before.
Letting out a mix between a sigh and a groan they grabbed a ginger chew from their Snack Bin (TM) before deafening themselves on the call.
# no-mic > 🔍
🟢 7 Online
JaNkLe KlAnK MaGiLlAcUdDy 9:38 PM
Body is being stupid again I’m gonna be afk for longer but I might hop off call idk
➕ 🎮 🎁 [ Message #no-mic 🙂] 🎙️
████ grabbed their phone, plopping down onto their bed and fiddling with the wrapper of their ginger chew in an attempt to open it, which was, frustratingly, very difficult to open with sweaty palms.
Too anxious to open the thing that helps them not be anxious. I’m going to start killing.
Eventually they did manage to open the wrapper, immediately shoveling the contents into their mouth; They sighed shakily, tossing the empty wrapper into the trash.
They did not feel good right now, knees weak, arms heavy, mom’s spaghetti type shit.
Damn, this was going to be a bad night, wasn’t it? They just wanted to play games with friends and now they’re fucking nauseous. Whyyyy..
They slowly pushed themselves off of their bed, deciding to relocate to the loft for some fresh(ish) air and a change of scenery.
It’s better than having an anxiety attack alone in their room.
A couple more ginger chews were shoved into their pocket — just in case — before opening the door and walking out into the hall.
Fuck.. Were they actually sick this time? They hoped not, they’d actually rather die than vomit. Literally THE worst sensory experience ever.
They are then promptly reminded of the phrase ‘Be careful what you wish for’ as they proceed to suddenly collapse to the floor.
# no-mic > 🔍
🟢 7 Online
ShArNoOnOo MaGiLlAcUdDy 9:52 PM
Junkie u there?
ShArNoOnOo MaGiLlAcUdDy 9:56 PM
Junkiiiiiiiie
ShArNoOnOo MaGiLlAcUdDy 9:58 PM
@JaNkLe KlAnK MaGiLlAcUdDy
ShArNoOnOo MaGiLlAcUdDy 9:58 PM
➕ 🎮 🎁 [ Message #no-mic 🙂] 🎙️
████ woke up abruptly.
The best they could describe it was like when they’d fall asleep too quickly and jerk awake, but cranked up to the maximum; All in all, not a pleasant experience.
They ran a hand down their face, mumbling in annoyance. They always wake up super early despite absolutely not being a morning person — Too tired to get up yet unable to fall back asleep. What time even was it? It must be early, otherwise they would’ve already been woken up by the eight different alarms they had set up. (Not like any of them worked at getting them up, anyway).
Sitting up, they wiped the crust from the corners of their eyes before pausing, their gaze landing on the soft patch of grass they had woken up on.
They stared at the ground dumbly for a long minute before finding their voice again.
”…This is definitely not my bed—“
They paused at the sound of their — normally higher pitched — voice being noticeably deeper, mouth agape for a moment before their brain caught up.
”Okay, I do not sound like that — I mean I kind of prefer it but huh? What??”
Sitting up more, they begin to push themselves up from the ground before their eyes land on their arms, causing them to startle and fall right back on their ass.
HOLY SHIT I’M A FURRY. Wait no that’s.. okay no that’s definitely fur, but it’s not completely covering their arm; it was more like arm hair.. Arm fur? Regardless, they had fur, and their complexion was so unbearably white that they were practically glowing in the sun. They looked like that one meme of the glowing man sitting at a booth.
They sat there dumbfounded, staring at their own arms like an idiot before snapping out of their confused stupor.
Am I dreaming right now, or..? I can’t use the hand trick or anything because it doesn’t work for me, and there’s no signs around to see if the words are all messed up, so…
They blinked a few times, each longer than the last before shutting their eyes tighter for a few moments.
…
Nope, still not in my bed. This better not be one of those nightmares that their brain won’t let them wake up from — Although they were lucid, so nothing bad should happen, hopefully.
Hey stood up again — this time without falling, although they did stumble a bit, a small amount of vertigo hitting them before their sense of balance corrected itself. They brushed off their clothes — some kind of coat? Before looking around, squinting a bit from the sun.
Aren’t people with brown eyes supposed to be more tolerant of sunlight? Maybe that’s for people who actually go outside, they supposed that was on them for staying cooped up inside all day.
Looking around, it looked like they were in a park or sorts, or maybe the area they were in just had a lot of greenery; They admittedly spent their first few minutes walking around and looking at all the plants — They spent half their life in a desert where the most interesting thing was maybe a flowering bush or a cactus, so pretty much anything green was worth gawking at. They missed seeing actual trees, okay?
All in all, it just looked like a regular old park, which was admittedly odd because most of the time their dreams would just plop them into their old house or something.
Continuing their walk, there wasn’t too much of note other than some buildings not too far off, vaguely familiar music playing from its direction; It was actually good music playing too, which was a welcome change from the same five songs and whatever cookie-cutter love song was popular at the time.
Seemed like the next best place to check out, maybe they can fuck around or do some cringe LARP when they get there; They could never get flight or other powers like that to work in dreams, which was annoying, but they could be cringe without consequence, so they supposed it was a good enough of a tradeoff.
Just don’t get too excited and wake myself up, and it’ll be fine.
The walk was admittedly nice, they’re pretty sure this was the first time since forever where they’ve gone outside and not feel their stomach twisting itself into knots. They could hear birdsong from the trees; They were no expert but they could at least recognize the calls of finches and crows, and… holy shit, are those chickadees?! Man, they completely forgot how much they missed those.
They fondly remember their grandpa quizzing them on birdcalls as they sang from the trees, teaching them the “Chicka-dee-dee-dee”s of chickadees and the “Drink-your-tea”s of eastern towhees.
The only redeeming birds living in Arizona were the mourning doves — and humming birds, and they barely even see the latter. They should really get into birdwatching at some point.
Bird tangent aside, it was nice walking around without their brain suddenly freaking out and making them nauseated.
It doesn’t take too long to get to the edge of the plaza (Seriously, why is the music so damn familiar?), pausing their trek to look around for any signs or anything with text on it.
Words were.. really weird in dreams, and were also EXTREMELY frustrating to write; Letters seemed to dissolve into nonsense the longer they stared — it reminded them a lot of those AI images that try to explicate text but just end up making hieroglyphics instead. Point being, words are weird in dreams. Find a sign, see if it gets all weird, boom, mystery solved.
Why were they trying to see if they were dreaming despite the fact they were near positive they were already? They weren’t sure.
Eventually they did find a sign and immediately began staring at it like it owed them money. Some staring later, and nope. No distortion of any kind.
So, not dreaming? But that wouldn’t make sense either, because you don’t just wake up in a random park somewhere. They don’t even remember falling asleep, either; We’re they that tired or something?
Frowning, they turned their attention away from the sign (Something about a cafe? They weren’t paying much attention to what was actually on it), opting to continue looking around instead.
They did so for about two seconds before landing their eyes on something familiar in the distance — a very, very large tower, surrounded by buildings with a plaza at its center. Their brain buffered for all but five seconds before the recognition hit them:
IS THAT THE FLIPSIDE TOWER???
They stared at it dumbstruck, only just now noticing the various inphernals gathered around and below it, as well as the ones walking around them.
Wait, That means — Shit, was there a mirror anywhere? Do they have restrooms here? Nevermind, stupid question — but they usually have mirrors, so..
It was surprisingly easy finding one, it mercifully being the single-occupant kind with the door you could lock from the inside; Not that they’d be using it for its intended use anyway.
After locking the door they immediately shuffled up to the wall-mounted mirror and checked their reflection and…
Holy shit they’re BALD.
Okay, that was expected — inphernals don’t have hair, and considering their skin practically reflected light, it was safe to assume that they weren’t exactly human right now.
Anyway — Their hair is just gone, although they weren’t really complaining; They had a lovely combination of both oily-ass hair and eczema — their hair was practically ALWAYS itchy and now they don’t have to deal with it? UH, HELL YEAH.
They had to pause their mini-celebration however after realizing that:
- They’re literally in Phighting.
- They apparently aren’t dreaming, which opens up a whole new can of worms.
It all begged the question of how the hell (heh.) they even ended up here in the first place, because as far as memories go, they don’t remember much of anything.
Oh god, did they die or something?? Don’t tell them those Isekai fics were predicting shit; Do they even have a ‘Sponsor’, or however it goes? They haven’t exactly been giving the whole ‘Oh yeah you died by the way’ speech, so it could be possible they just.. popped in here — Unless they were taking a more hand-off approach.
Regardless, they're going to have to find somewhere to stay, and get some source of income; Oh, they are absolutely NOT prepared for this — They could barely leave their house without getting anxious, and that was with accommodations.
They didn’t even have an identity here! How the fuck were they supposed to do literally anything??
…My sponsor is going to throw peanuts at me and laugh.
Opting to save the mental crisis for later, they turned their focus back towards their reflection; Their clothing wasn’t anything special, just a basic shirt and jeans combo — Their horns were just as plain, a pair of simple ‘demon’ horns in a boring gray color, or lack thereof. The only real hint of color on them other than the dull shades of their clothes were the dark red of their irises, and even then it was difficult to spot unless looked at closely enough.
It was like someone took one of those faceless crossroads NPCs and slapped headcannons onto it. In other words, they looked like the most generic guy in existence — Although maybe that wasn’t a bad thing; It probably wouldn’t be good if they garnered too much attention on the first day, and they doubt they have the right skills to defend themself.
Wait, that reminds me.. Gears are a thing here.
Did they even get one upon ending up here, or are they going to have to pull an Ollie and bullshit their way through everything?
A quick check of their pockets revealed a handful of bux (thank god for that), but other than that there was a whole lot of nothing — No phone, gear, anything. All they had were the clothes on their back (literally) and a handful of cash.
No gear to their name either, apparently; They came to the conclusion after staring intensely at a wall for a long minute before deciding to stop trying out of embarrassment.
Having finished freaking out (lie), they finally unlocked the door to the restroom and stepped out.
First order of business: Find somewhere to stay. Given they’re in crossroads somewhere it was safe to assume there were hotels — Nothing that would work long term (especially with their lack of a job) but they’d prefer not to sleep in a wet cardboard box all alone on their first night here.
They had exactly 100 bux on hand, which should be enough for 2-3 days if they were lucky; They’d have to spend the next couple of days planning on what to do next unless they wanted to speedrun becoming absolutely cooked.
Luckily there were public maps, because their sense of direction was absolute ass and they absolutely did not trust themselves with finding their way, especially in an unfamiliar place like this.
It was a long walk, but there seemed to be plenty of daylight left, and they didn’t seem to get tuckered out unlike before; Not that they were unfit, but their stamina was awful — they couldn’t even walk half a mile without wanting to disintegrate.
Perks of the species change, I guess.
By some miracle, they managed to not get lost and found themselves a cheap looking hotel to crash at for the next day or two. It wasn’t pristine looking, but it was cheap and beat being stuck outside.
There was a bit of a wait — apparently the unoccupied rooms still needed to be cleaned — but it was fine, it’s not like they were in a rush to get in or anything.
They leaned against the outside of the building, since the lobby was small and it would be awkward if they just stood waiting at the reception desk. They were keeping themselves occupied by fiddling with a loose pallet before one of the planks on it gave out and fell off.
Oops. Uhm.
A bit embarrassed, they bent over to pick it up before pausing, turning the detached board in their hands.
…They could pass this off as their gear, right? They hadn’t personally memorized every Roblox gear in existence, but if there are demons walking around with chezburgers and balloons as their gear, a plank of wood shouldn’t be too far fetched.
Right, they could make this work.
…Probably.
