Chapter Text
Honestly, you’re not quite sure what led you here. Even as you run through it over and over again in your head, it doesn’t make any more sense. If anything, you understand it even less.
You remember getting out of bed and brushing your teeth… You had a fever for the last few days, but you took your temperature again, and you were back to normal. You had a weird dream last night, not in the “whoa, this movie character just had a vision of the future that they’re totally going to ignore” way, but in the “what the hell kind of fever did I have to produce that trippy garbage” way.
You went to work… You came home, but even though you didn’t feel sick anymore, you still felt slightly “off”. (In hindsight, you guess that could’ve been a premonition of sorts; but, how unbelievably cliche would that be? What, you weren’t at 100% after being sick, so you should’ve predicted some magical bullshit was going to happen to you? Bullshit.)
So, since you felt slightly “off”, you looked out the window, saw the daylight, and thought to yourself, “You know what? Maybe I’ll take a walk before it gets dark. It might help me feel a bit better.”
You remember grabbing your keys and opening the front door.
And that’s the last thing that you remember before everything abruptly went to hell.
Frozen.
Lights.
Yellow, pink, yellow, white, neon… Flashing and moving all at once.
Faster than you could comprehend, glimmering, sparkling, and blinding, all at once.
Blinking. Flickering. Blinding.
Like ten thousand gems were embedded in the walls in all directions, and every single one of them was refracting light directly into you.
Not just into your eyes; a reverberating sensation, too vast and too overstimulating to even begin to comprehend, let alone understand, what you were experiencing.
It would be beautiful, if it wasn’t by far the most excruciating thing you’d ever experienced.
Pain.
Tearing from your insides.
Were you bleeding? Were you dying? You couldn’t see your body. Were you even seeing?
Sensations ripped through you, as though claws had ripped through your middle, skin and flesh unraveling. Burning, searing.
All at once, it felt as though your body was falling apart.
You couldn’t think, or hear; but if you’d been capable of it, then you’d certainly be screaming, not that you could tell either way.
On a level beyond your ability to comprehend, from whatever core you had left, you felt a concrete sense of absolute certainty:
You are going to die.
Please, make it stop, your scrambled mind managed to force to the surface.
The intensity of the sensations running through you defied all comprehension; under normal circumstances, you’d be unconscious by now, and free from the pain. But the unnatural nature of whatever was happening to you seemed to be keeping that at bay, forcing your continued awareness.
The sensation of tearing was spreading, lightning fast, as though you were being ripped from the inside out.
Pieces of your essence, slithering and falling away.
You felt your head and mind unraveling, falling to pieces, pulling away. You’d claw at your face if you could. Desperate to shield yourself from the end.
MAKE IT STOP!!!!!!
Thud.
…
…
…
Silence.
All at once.
You felt yourself catching your breath. Breath? Oh, thank God, you were still breathing.
The sensation of a gentle breeze brushing over you, if you were in the mind to process it, would have also assured you that your body was intact.
A numbing, dull pounding ran through your body… Never had your own heartbeat been so soothing. The sudden catharsis was utterly consuming; already, you could feel yourself slipping away to unconsciousness, and instinctively, gladly welcomed it.
Soft… wonderful…
…Comforting…
…
Thud.
A shudder ran through you, and you abruptly sucked in a gasp, sending a shockwave of adrenaline through your body, and your body jerked itself upright, eyes snapping open. Open? Oh, they were closed.
Your half-comprehending gaze drifted across your surroundings, first over your own legs (still there), then over the grass (oh), then to your hands (clutching the dirt so tight that it was digging into your nails), before it suddenly dawned on you.
What the hell just happened?
You raised your hands to your face, looking over them with new awareness—slightly dirty, but still there.
Stunned, you lowered your head to rest on your hands, feeling your hair and skin across your own fingers, and stared blankly at your lap.
You replayed the events you’d just experienced in your head, only becoming more baffled as you thought about it more. Quickly glancing left and right, you noted the grass surrounding you and the unfamiliar surroundings, and became more and more certain that you understood absolutely nothing.
You staggered to your feet, almost falling over yourself as you did so, but distantly noted that your body felt phantom shivers of where the pain had once been, but was otherwise in perfect condition. If anything, your body felt better than usual, save for the state of utter shock your mind was currently experiencing.
Did I… die? your brain managed to produce, but you quickly batted the thought away, feeling the definitely very real sensation of clothes and sweat sticking to your body, and the pounding of your heartbeat.
Another fever dream? you thought, utter bafflement rising through your body as you wildly looked around. But that doesn’t explain how I got here??
Was I drugged??? The tone of your internal confusion was only rising. I… I don’t remember, but it’s the only thing that… What the hell kind of drug did they give me? Your brain wracked through the faint memory of drugs. Fentanyl? No, I don’t think… What the hell was that drug I read about that causes extreme pain and hallucinations? Article… There was something… I can’t…
You wracked your brain to produce the name, but for the life of you it wouldn’t come. Finally, you gave up and slapped your hands to your thighs in frustration, only to—
CRSSSHHHHH!
You whirled around to the source of the noise, only to see—holy shit, is that a plane?? And was it exploding??!?!
Roughly a few hundred feet away, an absolutely massive red structure had come crashing out of the sky, and it was definitely currently exploding.
Right. Welp.
Understanding could come later.
Right now you were going to run the fuck away.
Painfully slowly for your liking, you managed to pull yourself out of your reverie, and after a brief stumble over your own feet, you were booking it.
The sound of your labored breathing was quickly overtaken by another BMMMMMMMMMMKSHHHH, followed by shrill whistling, and you pushed yourself even harder, definitely hearing and feeling that stuff coming off the explosion was coming closer.
“Holy shit,” you gasped out.
BMMM, KSSSHH, sheEEEE—
“Holy shit holy shit HOLY SHIIIIT!!!”
The cacophony of noises was getting closer, and out of your periphery, you could see what could only be debris flying, almost keeping pace with you where they landed. Flashes of reds, blacks, yellows, and a speck of blue registered in your brain, but you had absolutely no time to identify what sorts of debris was chasing you as you continued to push yourself even faster, if it was even possible. Finally, something landed too close behind you, and with a deafening BOOMMM, you went flying.
Head over heels—
—Heels over head—
—Limbs flailing as you tumbled and flailed in the air, feeling bits of rubble pelting your back as you flew.
You braced yourself for impact against the ground.
THUD.
Loud scraping noises filled your ears as your body tumbled uselessly over itself, completely out of your control, spinning over and over as you fully lost the ability to see your surroundings.
Tumbling…
Rolling…
Rolling…
…Stop.
You panted heavily, though your ears were ringing, so you could barely hear yourself.
Holy shit, I’m alive? you thought, laying blankly as you struggled to regain your senses.
“What, a human?!? ”
An incredulous voice came booming out around you, echoing as though through a megaphone of sorts. You jumped a bit, and a part of your brain marveled at the fact that there was somehow a living person around after all of that; but though you scrambled to get to your feet, a cold, massive, metallic object wrapped around you before you could so much as crawl, and then your head was spinning again. The world whipped around you as your body was raised high in the air against your will.
“…Oh, well. I can improvise.”
You managed to (yet again) regain your senses just enough to understand that a giant robotic hand was holding you, and you were being dangled in a tight fist in front of… something out of your line of sight.
“One move and the girl gets it!”
You heard a startled shout from a different male voice, much quieter and distant than this loudspeaker one.
“Now—AGGGHHH!”
Another boom went off, and the giant machine spun around back in the direction it’d come from, with you in its hand; only for a deafening metal-slicing sound to happen right next to your ear, and you were falling.
“Gotcha!”
Hands grasped you firmly, and you blinked furiously as you were falling through the air, eyes stinging. You could feel a warm body holding you tightly, and could see blue in your periphery as the world rushed past.
You braced yourself for a painful impact, but it never came. Instead, a loud thud echoed around you, and though you were dizzy reeling from the sudden stop, you were otherwise untouched.
You heard distant explosions, but, to be honest, after all the bullshit you’d just experienced, you couldn’t be bothered to so much as wonder what was causing them, much less attempt to look. Instead, you hung there, limp, somewhere between a dead fish and a ragdoll, completely surrendering in the arms of… something.
The arms holding you shifted, and you were slowly placed on the ground, stumbling a bit as you regained your footing. “Hey,” the masculine voice from before spoke behind you. “Are you okay?”
Though you were in a daze, your mouth started moving on its own as you quickly attempted to gain composure. “Oh, yeah, I’m…” You turned around. “...fine…”
Oh god.
You once again found yourself dumbfounded, pondering the events that had led you to this moment.
Well, it was certain now.
Nothing else makes sense.
You were dead. Or, heavily drugged. Or, in some sort of hallucinogenic purgatory.
There really was no other logical explanation.
After all, as far as you could remember, you were a normal human, doing normal human things in the real world, just as recently as a few hours ago.
So… You’d love an explanation. Could anyone give one? Hello? Universe?
Please?
Why the hell was the iconic, meme-ridden, video game character Sonic the fucking Hedgehog standing next to you?