Chapter Text
C.J. didn’t know what to think of the giant pink bubble. Granted, she didn’t know what to think of a lot of things for the past four or so years of the absolute weirdest shit imaginable. The pink bubble was at least easy to comprehend.
Four years ago, something happened in Oregon and a thing called Bill Cipher had taken over the world and ripped into dimensional space, causing worlds to spill into each other.
What that something was, no one knew. Someone had invited a mad god into the world and it had thanked its devotees by ripping the world up and tearing into nearby dimensions. Humanoid talking frogs built villages in old shopping malls, creatures calling themselves witches cast magic spells in forgotten areas of what was once America, A train that gave terrible therapy screamed by on an endless track, and pieces of a place called the Unknown popped up at random. There was also a brand of soda called Poop, which was the most normal thing and yet, somehow the worst.
And now C.J. was looking at a pink bubble. It seemed like it might hold the key to the weirdness, it certainly looked like something that you’d open in a video game to get a McGuffin or rescue a Princess or simply destroy to save The Mushroom Kingdom.
So she decided to open it. With a tool she macgyvered out of a screwdriver and random electrical bullshit. If someone was alive there, they deserved freedom and if dead, they would have a proper funeral.
C.J. climbed up the chains with some difficulty, smacking a large bat out of the air, and then dropped on the platform. She then pulled out the tool and started working on the lock. She did not expect it to pop open but it did and CJ pushed through.
The entire world had the unsettling aura of decay. Constructs moved like old animatronics and off-key 80s pop music played like a skipping record in a world made of, what C.J. could only describe, as rotting candy. Everything smelled like wet wood mixed with old candy you couldn’t chew. The sun gave off a red glow, like a dying star. It reminded the teen girl a bit of The Other World from Coraline, just the sense of something being made to fulfill a purpose and then left to rot afterwards.
C.J. moved carefully through, her tool drawn. The weirdness clearly was not coming from here but the bubble had obviously been made to hide someone. Probably a kid and that kid could either be helpful or at the very least needed help.
The castle seemed like the safest bet to find the McGuffin. C.J. entered and looked around. It was dilapidated and some parts of the wall were crumbling, letting dark red light in. C.J. wasn’t often scared anymore but the entire atmosphere made her a bit nervous, like a horror movie or one of those haunted house video games she used to enjoy. The feeling did not improve as she went upstairs, giant bugs the size of her head scuttled by and a stuffed bear growled at her and jerkily chased C.J. until she picked it up and threw it out a window.
Right as she reached the top of the stairs, C.J. could hear voices. The hair on the back of her neck stood up. Someone was crying and a distorted voice was speaking. The sound left her feeling a sense of deep dread that screamed at C.J. about ghosts and other things that went bump in abandoned places like these. Pushing down her fear, the teen crept to the bedroom door and looked in.
A girl around her age, wearing a beat up old brown dress, was sobbing. A construct that looked like a boy about the same age was speaking, leaning over the girl and gesturing unnaturally.
C.J fought the urge to run. The boy was fused with a skateboard and a hat, he looked like he was made of moldy dough with worms for hair. His eyes, blood red,shifted independently of each other. Nothing he was saying was remotely coherent to C.J. but it was clearly upsetting the other girl (who seemed to understand by how she was shaking her head) and it sounded unkind. He slammed the wall and the castle shook, sending dust cascading down into the hall.
C.J. sneezed.
Before she could run or hide, the boy whirled much faster than he should have been able to and was at the door, towering over the much smaller and now terrified teen.
What happened next was hard for the girl to process (due to the speed and violence of it) but she was fighting with the boy through the hall in a half frenzy as he repeatedly rushed her and knocked her around, breaking pictures, furniture, and constructs alike. A few times he managed to get C.J. down and put his hand over her face, filling her mouth and nose with foul smelling dough in a horrifying attempt to suffocate her. The other girl was screaming for the boy to stop and was throwing things at him, which had definitely saved C.J. more than once.
C.J. was about to say fuck it, she did not need to save this girl and dough boy could have her if he wanted her so bad, when he suddenly turned and the girl in the dress’s head was completely engulfed in dough and C.J. ran forward with her makeshift taser multitool, burying it into what appeared to be his neck. Wouldn’t you know it he wasn’t immune to electricity, and then the girl was free. C.J. slammed the tool into the dough several times and threw a match onto the mass for good measure before grabbing the other girl and dragging her outside. The constructs simply watched them run, though some growled, and the music became more manic. The sun seemed to throb as it grew and the air was so red C.J could hardly see, she stumbled for the door, the dough boy thing was roaring somewhere behind them, they were going to die here-
And they ran and fell off the platform into open air