REDMAN

“Idiot, stupid, moron, dumbass, braindead, idiot!”

Jevaun really had to love the way Hoshi spewed out different synonyms to call him dumb. Extremely pleasant thing to hear after he just went through an out-of-body experience and is experiencing the nausea aftereffects. Nearly incapacitated, Jevaun had landed on top of Hoshi in the commotion. They had to strain and put out a lot of effort to get out from underneath him. Once they did, they spent all their new time just yelling at him. How endearing.

(Sarcasm, if you couldn’t tell.)

Hoshi screamed, body turning rigid after the many paces they took.

They stood there for a moment while Jevaun clutched his stomach trying not to dispose of its contents. A deep, audible breath escaped them as they slowly turned back. They opened their mouth to say something, and whatever it was had been quickly and subconsciously replaced with:

“Dumbass !”

And they were right back into their tantrum.

Jevaun heaved a bit before wobbling to his feet. He landed on some colorful concrete, a saturated blue. Looking around, he realized the entire city was suddenly colorful. The buildings themselves, even without the mountains of graffiti he spotted, were bright. The sky was a whole rainbow of colors rather than its regular blue. The people here looked happier, too.

…This wasn’t Leo Andres. Couldn’t be.

There wasn’t any sky in Leo Andres. The city was dull. The people weren’t visibly content either.

His brows furrowed and his heart rate increased. Hoshi drifted to his side.

“Welcome to Earth-Triple-Zero,” they begrudgingly told him, annoyed. “It’s an alternate timeline.”

“Alternate…” Jevaun mumbled. “Like that time traveler shit Rhody was talking about?”

They flinched away from him, huffing.“I’m not a time traveler.”

He took another look at everything, stepping out of the alleyway he appeared in. Taking a backwards path, he spun himself in his walk to take it all in. Animals were crawling about everywhere like they were citizens. The city was decorated with shining lights and colorful beams if he looked out into the distance.

Man…

Admiring it all, he looked back at Hoshi, who was still unamused.

“An alternate timeline…” he repeated.

“Yup. And this is your last look and you can’t tell anyone.” Hoshi’s face scrunched up in anger as they pulled out a small, blinking device. They pressed on it…

…And it literally sparked and exploded.

…

“...‘My last look’.”

“Do you want to get home or not?”

“Obviously,” he answered, rolling his eyes.

Still, this whole thing was a novelty. How many people can you meet who can honestly answer that they’ve been to an alternate dimension? Jevaun knew Rhody would be ecstatic to hear about this once he got back. It was just like what they were talking about with the quanta or whatever. Way to go, eye witness!

Hoshi sighed, looking at their goober-thingamajig, continuing to mutter after groaning, “I think you crushed it.”

Jevaun grimaced. No, he didn’t…

Hoshi pocketed it and started walking in a direction, Jevaun quickly following.

“Where are we going?”

Hoshi groaned. “We’re gonna find a friend. We were supposed to meet up here together, anyway.”

“Why?”

“Because… things are happening.”

“What kinda things?”

“Bad ones.”

“Like…?”

Hoshi started walking fast. “Stars, it doesn’t matter! You’re going home anyway!”

Jevaun shut his mouth. “...But it’s bad.”

“Stop.”

Hoshi maneuvered this bizarro Leo Andres with ease, like they’d lived here their entire life. Cutting through alleyways and the emptiest streets he’d ever seen, it seemed like they were heading for the perimeter of the city. He’s already seen a few highways leading out to nature, oddly unlike biomes. Despite passing those ones, there would infinitely be another exit. He wondered how dumb he looked trying to take in details in every direction.

“Y’know, the thing about Earth-Triple-Zero is that it’s not actually a real timeline,” Hoshi explained. “It exists outside of the narrative, so to speak. So then, this fake timeline just kind of fills in the empty space with stuff it thinks should be there.”

Jevaun hummed with interest.

“But sometimes, it just leaves stuff empty.”

Jevaun tried to imagine the idea of an empty space of absolutely nothing and to his surprise, his imagination did wonders— 

Why was there a random guy Jevaun has never met in the middle of it?

Hoshi put up a hand to the guy in the middle of the white void. The edge of the city quite literally ended with nothing. It was all white. The sky ended, the roads ended, the buildings ended… All of it cut into nothing like the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic. Jevaun hesitated to step into it while Hoshi simply walked out onto the nonexistent.

Hoshi talked to the guy out in the void, no regard for Jevaun whatsoever. You’d think they’d care more considering how much they just did. It took too long, entirely too long.

…It was starting to settle in that he really was in some unknown world. His stomach churned looking at the lack of dimension in the spanning white before him. He tried his best to hold his patience and whatever he was going to throw up before. He held it once; he can do it again.

Hoshi screamed, a loud and drawn out ‘ugh’.

With a walk of shame, Hoshi went back to him with the other grinning guy. He held out his hand and said, “Deval.”

Jevaun looked at him skeptically while taking his hand. “...Jevaun.”

“So basically, he has no extra Bendsticks,” Hoshi explained. “We’ll have to wait until we get back to bluegirl.”

“Wait, Bendsticks?” Jevaun repeated. “That’s the funniest thing ever.”

“Well, it bends space and time…” Hoshi mumbled.

“Aight. So, bluegirl? That’s…?”

Hoshi exchanged a look with Deval.

“You wanna get him involved?” he asked.

Hoshi looked Jevaun up and down. “No. He can go back as ignorant as he was when he got here. Should be fine.”

“What? No,” Jevaun argued. “I wanna know. Don’t treat me like I’m dumb.”

“You heard them,” Deval said as he clicked his tongue, putting his hands up in a faux surrender. “Out of my hands.”

Jevaun crossed his arms and gave Hoshi a long, cold stare. They did not yield.

…Somehow, he feels like this is a pattern with them.

This Deval guy was actually pretty cool.

“Yeah, the first time you go through one of those dimension-folding-bending-holes and stuff… It sucks so bad. It gets better, though.” Deval had been talking about things that hadn’t mattered for about the entire time they had lunch (which he insisted on, to Hoshi’s loud protests). “Once you’re over the jetlag and nausea, you get to see a whole bunch of things through that portal.”

“Not like I’ll have another chance at it after this, though…” Jevaun sighed, poking another fry in ketchup. He bit on it and nodded his head towards Hoshi. “So, what’s their deal?”

Deval glanced at them, who was sulking on their chair with no plate in front of them. He shrugged.

“Not over teen angst, I guess.”

“That is absolutely not true.” Hoshi cut in. “I don’t have teen angst!”

“You dye your hair black and listen to the saddest music I’ve ever had the displeasure of hearing.”

“So?”

Deval grinned. “...Well, can I hold your hand while I say this? We’re friends now, aren’t we?”

“No!”

Deval turned to Jevaun. “They always say that.”

Jevaun laughed a little.

“Anyway—” Deval wiped his hands on his pants and dropped some cash on the table, signaling for Hoshi to get up as well. “—You, Jevaun, can wait for us here while we go survey a nearby timeline. We’ll get you back home as soon as we’re done there.”

Jevaun's brows furrowed. “...I’m not staying here by myself.”

Hoshi rolled their eyes. “What are you, five? You can handle it.”

“No, this is a unfamiliar city,” he snapped back. “Ion know how safe this place is.”

Everything was weird at this point. An unfamiliar city is probably the top of his list of worries since he doesn’t know where anything is, doesn’t know anybody minus people who were trying to leave him, and doesn’t have a place to go to. Like hell he was staying here.

Deval’s grin widened as he looked at Hoshi. “...It’s your call.”

“Why is it always my call?”

“Because I don’t care.”

Hoshi rolled their eyes, then entered a glaring contest with Jevaun, who was looking at them intensely and expectantly. He understood by now that they had a very strong resolve. Well, so does he. He wasn’t going to back down easily. Hoshi’s expression faltered after a few moments and twisted into one of sympathy.

“...Okay.” Hoshi gave in. “But…”

Deval and Jevaun both waited for the condition as they looked between the ground beneath their feet and their partner. A silent communication went between them and him, one obviously unknown to Jevaun. But it landed on one thing:

“...You cannot leave my side if you want to live.”

…

Well, that was ominous.

“Alright, team, we’re aiming for Earth-Two-Sixteen…” Deval turned a dial on his Bendstick until the numbers ‘216’ flashed in the air projected above it. “As soon as it hits nineteen-fifty-five hours, we’re going back to our B-point, and at twenty-hundred hours, we’re hitting the road for Triple-Zero.”

Jevaun converted the times in his head. 1955 is 7:55… 2000 is 8:00 on the dot. It’s 6 o’clock now.

“What the hell are we doing for an hour?” he asked.

Hoshi smiled. “Don’t worry about i—”

“—Spying,” Deval interrupted.

Hoshi glared at him.

“Awesome.” Jevaun said that, but he wasn’t trying to be caught in a web of lasers. He's not James Bond; in case you couldn't tell.

“We’ve got thirty seconds on the clock,” Hoshi reported.

“Twenty-nine… twenty-eight… twenty-seven…”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“But I can. Doesn’t mean I have to, but I can.”

Jevaun reasoned in his head that if Deval was counting down to it the way he was, then this task shouldn’t be anything crazy. If it were really serious, he wouldn’t be joking around, would he?

Hoshi leaned into him. “It helps if you breathe out completely when you go through.”

He nodded and, as a bright flash of violet expanded outwards into a ring tearing through reality, walked into a new one, releasing the air in his lungs. He shut his eyes tightly. A sharp sting shot its way through his chest, but his stomach was perfectly still this time. Once the sting wore off, he opened his eyes to the new world.

Earth-216, 6:01 PM.

This Earth was grungy, if he had to describe it. In comparison to the wild selection of colors in Triple-Zero, Two-Sixteen was darker. Like the world itself had to harden to hide from the world itself, the textures of it all were well-defined in bold shadows. Feeling and looking foreign, it would’ve been obvious to anyone that he did not belong there. It was as if a cartoon character had entered an adult’s animation.

He turned back to Hoshi and Deval, both of which were undergoing a transformation. Suddenly, they looked like they belonged here.

A tingling sensation turned his gaze down. Suddenly, he looked like he belonged here.

“It’s Added Code,” Deval explained, gearing up with flares and… knives. “The appearance of this place is part of the Added Code — AC — and since we’re here, Two-Sixteen acclimated us.”

“Good thing he exists in this one,” Hoshi mumbled to Deval, throwing a thumb at Jevaun. “Would’ve gotten vaporized if it didn’t find his Base Code anywhere.”

…

“I’m… joking,” Hoshi clarified. “Sorry.”

Deval patted Jevaun on his back as the three of them walked away. He put himself behind Hoshi and Jevaun, the latter in the middle to follow the former. Hoshi placed their index finger upon their pursed lips.

Crawling towards the end of the alleyway, they looked both ways into the glowing red streets, strange half-tone light flittering down below their feet. They signaled for the other two to come forward. As they left the alleyway, the three of them took a sharp turn to the left and started looking through the passing gaps and connecting streets. Just down this main street was a huge warehouse, dirty and dark. Echoing throughout the streets, he heard mumbles and footsteps running about. Who the fuck else was here? About four alleyways up, there was one that wasn’t a dead end. That was the one they entered. Slipping through the cool shadows, Hoshi found a building with a long ladder up the side for everyone to scale. Jevaun moved as quickly as he could up the thing.

Hoshi looked back down at him and momentarily stopped. In the next one, they hoisted themself several bars further up the ladder. Jevaun paused in awe as they did it several more times. The sound wasn’t even concerningly loud. He contemplated if he wanted to try it, before he settled on “No”. He was able to quicken up his climbing speed with them higher up, though (even if he slipped a few times).

At the top, Hoshi hoisted themself to the adjacent steel balconies, parallel to broken and boarded up windows.

Jevaun looked down at Deval. He just gestured for him to follow them. He took a deep breath. Instead of jumping over, he carefully stepped on the building’s ledges and damn near plastered himself to those walls, reaching for the balcony rails. Distantly, he heard Deval’s breathy snickers as he tried hard not to make noise reaching for it.

His foot slipped.

…!

Before his body slapped onto either the concrete or the steel, Hoshi had grabbed his arm and grounded him enough where the only noise that came out of it was the sound of his shoes slipping off the brick walls. Hoshi’s eyes had opened at just that moment where Jevaun could peer into them. Pulling him up, Hoshi no longer allowed him a view. (By “pulling him up,” he actually means “trying their best to pull him up by anchoring their weight so he could climb up while they slowly slipped across the balcony back to him.”)

Well, he had to do that like two more times until they both reached a point where they could peer over the corner at the warehouse. It… got easier. No shame in doing something he has no experience in.

…Okay, maybe a little shame.

Hoshi observed the tall building as people in black patrolled from it outwards. The windows on the warehouse were visibly shut away with some shoddy pieces of metal drilled against it. It looked as if there was only one entrance, blocked off by two guards in black. Hoshi didn’t move for a while. Jevaun didn’t get a good look when they stirred, but…

“Where’s Deval?” he whispered.

Hoshi pointed to the warehouse.

He took a peek. 

It was kind of hard to see but if he just unfocused his eyes a little, he could see the guy above the roof’s edge, unfastening some kind of rope. He creeped along the shingles, where Jevaun noticed the windows would flash white light under the wooden boards for a few moments at a time.

Hoshi slightly looked over their shoulder to him, too long if they were supposed to be watching Deval. Jevaun held their gaze even after they redirected their attention.

“We might have to go over there,” Hoshi mumbled. “I don’t know what to do with you if that happens.”

Over there? Where it’s buffed with security and there’s little-to-no witnesses if they get kidnapped or murdered? Why were they trespassing where they could get into some actual trouble anyway?

Deval seemingly dropped down from the side.

Hoshi shoved him, chewing on their lip. “Alright, come on. We gotta go.”

“Now?”

Yes, now. Hoshi didn’t even wait to answer his question before they started going the other way around the building. Jevaun grew a pair and started crossing the balconies by himself, following Hoshi as closely as he could. Jumping down the ladder and sliding down respectively, the two moved on foot towards the warehouse.

Hearing foreign footsteps and his own heartbeat speed up, Hoshi led him inside a run-down building, crouching to avoid what little view the windows had.

The inside of the building was… rough to say the least.

It looked as if it were a family home. What, with all the furniture and torn paintings. Shattered glass was scattered across both of the carpets and tiles of the living room and kitchen. Vases were broken, furniture destroyed, wallpaper peeling.

As Jevaun crawled amongst the glass, he caught a glimpse of the remains of a family portrait. He paused. One mother in a striking red scarf, a kind yet tired looking man, and a child who looked no more than five. Their figures were unobscured, unlike the rest of the picture. The edges were frayed and black like charcoal, landed in between burnt slabs of wood and sad piles of dust. He frowned, directing his attention back to moving, ignoring pieces of obvious history.

He didn’t dare to repeat it, should he end up like the family in the photo.

Using a different back door, he and Hoshi assumed the guard’s previous path towards the back of this town, marked by a tall stone fence. To their right was the warehouse, which he didn’t get a very good look at up close before Hoshi pulled him back against the corner of the nearest building.

They took his place as they looked for any threats.

…Wait, but Jevaun didn’t see any guards there—

Pop!

Distantly, a crackle resounded through the streets, succeeded by another, and another. Followed by the three crackles, he heard fast footsteps and the friction of clothing escaping his range of hearing.

Hoshi slapped his arm lightly and they both waited outside of a side door to the warehouse. It held a symbol that Jevaun vaguely recognized, a scarlet robotic-looking face splattered on. Where has he seen that before? Hoshi searched their back pocket for something.

…They flinched.

From there, they frantically checked every pocket — no — anywhere they could possibly carry an item in, thrice over. They stopped breathing.

“Fuck…”

Jevaun leaned down. “What’s wrong?”

Drawing out the ‘F’, they repeated, “...Fuck.” They dropped their arms to their sides before bolting around the warehouse, leaving him behind. “I must’ve dropped the key when we went to Triple-Zero!”

They scanned the walls, the pipes, the boarded windows, as they ran everywhere.

They don’t have a key to get inside, but they need to somehow. Could they scale the walls and go through the roof? No, there weren’t any jugs or good grips to get a hold of.

…I wonder if I can…

Jevaun backed up a few steps and gave a good, hard kick to the door.

…Well, he could see his footprint. Again.

He aimed under the lock, noticing the hinges were on his side. He heard a loud splintering. Again.

At this point, he couldn’t see where Hoshi was anymore, but he just knew he needed to get this door down before the guards in black got here. He had no idea what was going on, but his body had a bad feeling about those guys. Kick it again.

Finally, the door collapsed with a loud clump that echoed throughout the building.

Oh.

This place was… creepy to say the least. The periodic white light he’d seen earlier illuminated nearly everything inside. Crates, disturbingly stained with red and some broken, lined the walls as if they were walls themselves. The floor was marked with miscellaneous substances that he didn’t dare to ask himself what they were. Parts of machines were scattered, carelessly strewn about and damaged even worse. This place almost felt alive. 

Or barely so, he should say.

Something about it all screamed death, despair, disease, and the screeches hurt his heart and soul. Something about it felt terribly familiar , like a fact of life most go ignoring, which made it all so much worse.

He took a step forward, instantly repulsed by the atmosphere. No, he should get Hoshi, shouldn’t he? 

But to take another step, even to leave…

…

He was utterly petrified.

“What the…?”

Hoshi ran up to him.

“You kicked that door down?”

He nodded, taking a big breath. Hoshi frowned, taking notice.

“Thank you,” they breathed, before approaching the source of the white light. 

Jevaun, of course, followed. He wasn’t going to seem uncool by sticking to the door without even leaving.

Behind piles of crates, a small beam of light flashed upwards towards the boarded windowed rims of the building. Hoshi gave it a strong stomp, glass shattering and light finally ceasing. They crouched down, running their fingers along the tiles of the floor. One of them shifted, ever-so-slightly, a tile pinched below a larger box.

Hoshi placed their back against a side of the box, pushing their feet on the ground to get it out of the way. Seeing them struggle a bit, Jevaun pitched in to help by doing the same thing. The crate slid right off of the shifting tile.

Hoshi then dug their fingers along the edges of the loose tile, lifting it up to reveal a ladder into a dark abyss. Jevaun could see a little bit of light, but he was confident it was dying. 

Hoshi did not take the ladder down, but instead whispered, “Quickly!” before moving out of the way, pushing Jevaun to do the same.

From the pitch black hole came people.

People.

All of them were battered and bruised in some capacity. Little kids, older people, young adults. There had to be at least twelve hostages to come out of the hole. The strangest part?

Some of them looked like people Jevaun knew.

Including one that looked like Hoshi.

He wasn’t sure why he was so shocked. Alternate universes were confirmed for him now, but… He hadn’t seen anyone he knew up until now. It was almost nauseating to think about. Leading a completely different life in a completely different world where meeting entirely different people was a possibility was… nauseating .

Where the hell would Jevaun be if he didn’t have the people he does now? He can’t fathom it.

Maybe all of it was just finally catching up to him.

“Come on! Follow Beryl!” Hoshi whisper-shouted to the group, pointing to the other Hoshi, a taller, rougher version of them, significantly angrier, like a soldier.

Said ‘Beryl’ glared harshly at Jevaun, shooting an accusatory glance at Hoshi, to which they responded by shoving them and telling them to get a move on.

Going out the way they came, Beryl led the group to safety through the stone fences that Jevaun had noticed earlier. The wall was not plastered together as well as he would’ve thought, because they and Hoshi easily pushed the bricks and pieces of wall away to create an opening to a baby forest.

The forest was dark and charred. It didn’t look recent by any means, yet the entire place was still dry and dusty. Save for a few small trees and plants, there was next to no life surviving inside except Jevaun, Hoshi, and these other people that were imprisoned in the warehouse. There was no cover here should they be chased.

As the group pushed through the wall, Hoshi doubled back to place the bricks in a semi-coherent pattern again, covering their tracks.

“Alis!” Beryl shouted. “Leave it!”

Hoshi did not leave it, only quickened their pace, which in turn, made the placement look sloppy. Once they decided they were finished, they did their best to catch up with the rest of the group. Jevaun slowed his pace to give them a slight push for speed, which went unexpected for them. Just one brick had fallen in their flight, but Jevaun wasn’t going to let them go back, lest they get caught. Lest everyone gets caught.

Who knows what would happen then?

“What’s happening?” he asked, running alongside them.

Their brows furrowed. “It’s just… rescue.”

“Yeah, no shit!” he snapped. “What about everything else? The ash, the guards, you and Deval? You haven’t been saying shit and it’s pissing me off!”

Hoshi shook their head frantically. “You don’t want to know! You shouldn’t .”

A tiny crackle in the distant air shut both of them up. Were those guns?

Jevaun turned back to Hoshi, a little more fearful than before. “But I do !”

“ Shut up!” Beryl yelled. “You’ll lead them right to us!”

Jevaun huffed, giving Hoshi a dirty look.

Whatever. He could wait. But he wasn’t going to forget about it.

The shots in the background persisted. Suddenly, Deval came to mind.

“Where’s—?”

“He’ll be fine,” Hoshi interrupted. “Running’s all he’s good for, anyway.”

Faint yelling reached his ears.

“...Evidently, he’s crap at that , too!”

Beryl forced a couple heads down at the front, accompanied by a terrifying symphony of bang, bang, bang.

“Stay together!” they yelled.

Hoshi pushed Jevaun behind them as best they could, having a smaller figure than him. The pace they were traveling at quickened as the group had to manuever compromising territory they were probably intentionally avoiding before.

Jevaun’s feet landed heavily with every step he took. It felt like every organ he had was scrambled out of place with every movement.

The men in black were only visible if he didn’t look. Just a flash in his periphery. If he looked, he’d be dead indefinitely.

How could anyone do this willingly?

Tragedies of this kind were only ever told in stories; Jevaun never thought he’d have to live through a kind of crisis that’d be published in a newspaper. The kind most people would probably brush off after reading.

Some screams he heard cut off just as quickly as they appeared. The group evidently did not stay as together as Beryl hoped.

These leaves are too loud , Jevaun thought, having stared at the forest floor for long enough. It all transitioned into just dry dirt soon enough as it steered upwards. Hoshi sped past him desperately, climbing on top of every ledge and jug available just before Jevaun got there. They looked back, checking to see if he followed.

His hands and fingertips especially burned, but not more than his chest.

They slid down the other side, dirt trailing in a cloud behind them. Jevaun lost his balance a little, tripping onto his face. He didn’t bother getting up.

Hoshi patted him on his back.

The group landed in a little damp cave marked in blue paint, which appeared black under the red of the night. There were less people here than he remembered.

He swallowed his unease.

Some of the hostages helped each other tie up some healing wounds again, tearing off cloth from their already torn pants or sleeves to do so. Jevaun and Hoshi had kept to themselves, being pretty much useless for medical issues and the former being an unfamiliar, and therefore untrustworthy, face. He kept getting stared at by the hostages with these… terrified looks on their faces. Betrayal and anxiety flashed in their icy gazes whenever they looked at him.

…Shit, it had to have been rough down in that hole. Who knows how much human interaction they got other than each other? Sun? Food ?

At least he was the only one intimidating them. 

Jevaun glanced down at Hoshi, who had been silently sitting like a child waiting for a teacher’s direction. He hadn’t talked to them when they got here, giving them some time to cool off from whatever that was in the forest before he would try again to ask what was happening.

“Alis,” Beryl called.

Hoshi looked up.

“Your Bendstick?”

“Right, my… uh, Bendstick.” Hoshi hesitated. “It’s… broken. Sorry.”

Beryl clicked their tongue.

Jevaun was able to get a better look this time.

They wore all black. Black shirt, black pants, black boots. Their hair was shorter and roughly cut along the edges. And seemingly, they always wore that scowl on their face as part of their resting expression, even as they were aiding people and talking to those that seemed like friends. Their hands were calloused and scarred, unlike Hoshi’s, which were smooth without imperfection. It was clear just by looking at them that despite the fact they shared the same face, the two had lived under extremely different circumstances.

A rustling shook him from his thoughts. The little murmurs within the group silenced.

Grass crunched as something approached.

Beryl placed themself between everyone and the entrance, fists clenched as they kept low to the ground.

“Sorry for the wait, guys.”

Jevaun released a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

Deval grinned as he poked his head in the cave’s entrance, waving his Bendstick like a blue flashlight.

“And with time to spare at—” He checked his watch. “—1954 hours!”

“That’s no better than being late ,” Beryl reprimanded.

“Hey, have more faith in me. Besides…” Deval shrugged. “You expect me to run all the way here like a trained marathoner while also getting REDMAN’s guys off my back at the same time? I’m bound to get lost.”

REDMAN?

“Did you?”

“Nah. I’m too good at my job to get lost. I was on time, dude.”

“And what if an emergency happened?” Beryl pressed. “What if we needed to make an early escape? Alis wouldn’t be able to do it, since their Bendstick was broken.” Hoshi winced. “You’re our only means of escape and you come one minute before we’re supposed to be here?”

Deval pressed his lips into a flat line. Just when Jevaun thought he was taking this seriously, he said…

“Chill.”

Beryl snorted indignantly.

Jevaun’s thoughts about him being cool were… being re-thought. Yeah, the guy was cool. Too cool. To a fault. Jevaun thought he was genuinely in danger back there, especially when Hoshi hung back to rebuild that stupid wall and the guns came out, and all Deval had to say about it is “ chill ”?

Hoshi made eye contact with him, before quickly looking back to Deval.

“If I remember correctly…” Jevaun mumbled to them. “We have five minutes before we leave.”

Hoshi nodded. “Okay.”

They took a deep breath.

“...Unless?”

“No.”

“Okay…” They sighed. 

They looked at him directly in his eyes. It was uncomfortable.

“For nearly the past five years, the multiverse has been collapsing because of a man we know as REDMAN,” they explained, like a perfectly practiced recital. “Timelines and universes within our multiverse have been both ravaged and entirely destroyed by him and his people. It’s left a lot of people without anywhere to go but Triple-Zero and leaving room for corruption everywhere. Glitches, we call them.” Hoshi looked back at Beryl and Deval for a moment. “We — me, Deval, Beryl, and everyone else — are trying to stop him. These people here are mostly just bystanders from the last rampage.”

Jevaun nodded. “Was that so hard to explain?”

Hoshi frowned. “Wouldn’t you rather live without the anxiety of whether or not you’re next?”

“Am I?”

Hoshi paused. “...I don’t know.”

Jevaun shrugged. “It’s a little scary, but it’s way scarier not knowing.”

Hoshi hummed, clearly disagreeing with that notion but not having the mind to outwardly say it.

“What? You’d rather get stuck in a situation without knowing what to do?”

Hoshi didn’t answer, just gave him an unamused look. Then they redirected his attention elsewhere.

“You’ll probably be the last person to get to go home here,” they explained. “You’re the least injured…”

“Alright.”

Hoshi shot a look at him.

“What?” he asked.

“Don’t you…” They pursed their lips. “Don’t you wanna go home?”

“Yeah…” he said. “What’s your point?”

They shook their head, standing from their position and brushing off their knees of dust. They motioned for him to join as they circled back with Deval and Beryl.

Deval turned his dial again, until the numbers flashed ‘000’.

“Everyone stay close and move quickly once the opening manifests,” Beryl announced. “The sooner we get everyone in, the sooner we can get you home.”

“Speech!” Deval cheered.

“That was the speech.”

“You’re no fun.” He sighed. “Alright, we are outta here in… twenty… nineteen…”

CRASH.

Jevaun heard a loud crackle like thunder outside. His blood ran cold.

Outside was a line of guards in black.

“Okay, actually, we’ve got ten!” Deval hastily attempted to input.

Beryl rushed outside, ready to fight with nothing on them while the enemy was fully-armed. Hoshi chased after them, calling their name frantically as every hostage huddled towards the back wall of the wet cave. Jevaun’s focus quickly shifted in between Deval and the victims, to Beryl and Hoshi, and back.

Beryl narrowly avoided a barrage of bullets as Hoshi pulled their jog to a stop, slipping onto their back in the attempt to avoid injury. Two or three guards were assaulted by Beryl as they tried and failed to hit them quickly.

Jevaun’s breath hitched and his body moved before he could think.

He ran right up into the line of fire, laser-focused on a retreating Hoshi. With no regard to himself, he covered them as best he could while they ran back, putting his body between them and the armed forces. He picked them up easily.

Beryl twisted a man’s arm, wrestling his gun out from his hands and hitting another right in the head with it. They turned their newfound weapon to their six and shot a straight line into several torsos, legs, and arms. Getting jumped by two others from behind, they tossed and turned, stomping harshly on one’s foot while elbowing the other to release themself from their living restraints. Every soldier they defeated just brought about another wave, neverending.

Still, they fought on, headbutting the next, biting another, kicking another down.

Deval’s portal had opened, flashing brightly in the dark red atmosphere. Hoshi and Jevaun picked up the pace to reach it, seeing Deval evacuate the group. Hoshi turned their head back too many times for Jevaun’s liking.

Beryl couldn’t fight all those guys and more. They were going to block them as best they could instead.

“Go!”

Hoshi would’ve certainly refused to leave had Jevaun not picked them up and forced them to go.

“No!” They tried hitting him in the neck and his back weakly. “No, no, no! Stop!”

He hoped the last thing they saw wasn’t Beryl as the two of them caught up in the nick of time. Jevaun’s knees buckled underneath him. He winced, hoping he didn’t accidentally hurt Hoshi as his grip on them loosened.

The two of them stayed silent, one catching their breath.

They made it to Triple-Zero, but they left behind Beryl, who had no way of getting here. They’d… That really happened, didn’t it? Jevaun witnessed a self-sacrifice happen in real time.

Not to mention the countless people who died in that forest.

Hoshi sat flat, head down and expression unreadable.

Their expression was blank. There was no twinge of the mouth for a frown, nor was there wrinkle on their face to show any sign of emotion. They looked resigned, if Jevaun could put a name to it.

They turned their head up at him.

…No, that’s not it. This was another emotion entirely. As Hoshi pulled themself back into their usual blank expression, Jevaun realized that it was an emotion that he hasn’t experienced in any capacity. This wasn’t anyone’s ordinary grief or exhaustion.

“I’m…” Jevaun mumbled, unsure of what to say. “...I’m sorry.”

They shook their head.

“It’s okay. We weren’t even friends…”

There was something terribly wrong in the way they reacted to it all.

Jevaun couldn’t find the answers to the questions he had.

Hoshi leaned a little closer to him, frowning. They opened their mouth to say something but shut it quickly.

“Well, that was a mess, huh?” Deval laughed a bit. His voice was louder than Jevaun would’ve expected. “Y’know, I wasn’t worried at all. How much can people do in, like, thirty seconds, anyway?”

Jevaun glared at him, scoffing. “Can you shut the fuck up?”

Deval’s eyes widened. “A-ah. Bit raw, huh?”

“No, he’s right,” Hoshi agreed. They stood closer to him. “You always do this. You always treat things like a joke no matter what’s happening.”

Deval frowned. “I wasn’t trying to… make it a joke. I just—”

“Drop it. We need to get the survivors home.”

The air got tense, but Jevaun was with Hoshi all the way. Even if he didn’t know Deval enough to really say anything about his habits, he could confidently say that he, at the very least, disliked his character. He’d appreciated it when he first got here, having been a little rattled at the whole situ—

Click.

Jevaun’s emotions halted, suddenly feeling for the guy.

He’s one of those people.

With the new information that pieced itself together in his mind, Jevaun stopped himself from being angry. Not completely, but he certainly had no will to hold any long-term grudge about it. He took a breath and frowned.

“Thanks,” he said to Deval, to his confusion.

Hoshi lifted a brow, shooting a bewildered glance at him.

“You’re an asshole, though.”

Deval’s eyes darted between the ground, Hoshi, and Jevaun, puzzled and upset. Jevaun could barely see him breathing. Then, he let out a sigh, and a new expression that was entirely different from the two Jevaun can remember him carrying.

“I don’t want everyone to be all… depressed over stuff,” he explained. He looked at Hoshi. “Especially not you.” He looked back down at his feet. “I… It’s so goddamn hard to do this job already. But to do it all miserable?”

Hoshi’s face fell, dropping its frustrated quality, yet they remained silent.

“I’m sorry.” He offered his apologies like a scolded dog. “I care. I do. I don’t know. It’s just… easier this way. I’m s-...” He took a shaky breath. “...sorry.”

Jevaun glanced at Hoshi, who was visibly faltering.

They sighed. “Okay.”

Deval looked panicked.

“I… We’ll… figure it out later…” Hoshi said. In a softer tone, they added, “You’re okay. For now…”

Jevaun grinned.

Hoshi shakily formed a smile, attempting to lighten the mood. “Home time?”

The weight was lifting.

“Yeah,” Deval said. “Those guys have been waiting a long time for this.” 

It was surreal, watching people go home considering his own situation.

“So what’s the difference between a universe and a timeline?” Jevaun asked, watching one of the little kids reunite with their parents.

“Well…” Hoshi thought about it for a moment. “You could think of it like… Timelines are different time, same circumstance, and universes are same time, different circumstance. Timelines are inside universes, which are inside multiverses. More or less.”

“So a timeline would be like last Tuesday if I ate a sandwich instead of a grilled cheese and a universe would be if I was like a wizard or something?”

“Yup. Plot versus continuity change.” Hoshi smiled. “Pretty much.”

Letting his imagination run wild, Jevaun then asked, “What are the other universes like?”

“Anything you could think of.” Hoshi walked with him. “There’s a universe where you’re a mermaid, a universe where you’re a superhero, a universe where you’re a famous author…” Hoshi prattled on. “Sometimes, it’s got nothing to do with you or the people inside, and maybe the planet’s just overgrown or something.”

Jevaun chuffed. “Can we go to the universe where I have superpowers?”

Hoshi grinned politely, strained. “Yeah… The ones that change people’s bodies like that… those don’t usually mesh well coming into others and vice-versa. Sorry.”

“Aw.”

“See, Hoshi talking about dumb smart stuff means they’re putting the moves on you,” Deval butt in, wrapping an arm around Jevaun’s shoulder. “I should know. They sweet-talked me into bed with all that universe stuff.”

“No…” Hoshi grimaced. “No, I… didn’t . Ew.”

“Are you saying that night was a mistake?!” Deval blew raspberries at them. “You playboy! Playgirl! …Play…”

“Player,” Hoshi finished for him. “And I’m not one.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” Jevaun teased.

“Oh Stars, don’t do that,” Hoshi groaned. “He’s gonna take it as a sign to keep going.”

Deval showed all his teeth in his big, wide smile, trying to appear as innocent as possible. “Jevaun, can I get that in writing just in case?”

“Yeah, no.”

Deval pushed some buttons on his Bendstick, curiously not using the dial. Maybe the dial was just for universes. After a miraculous thirty seconds, their gate awaited them to deliver the last citizen to their home.

“Get in,” Deval playfully demanded.

Hoshi muttered to themself, “That’s what she said.”

Jevaun snorted.

The three of them were the last ones to enter the portal, watching over the remaining people lest they get left behind and stranded in a foreign timespace again. It made Jevaun feel all macho and professional, like a bouncer to a politician or the First Lady. He puffed up his chest and leaned into it.

Leaving everyone in their proper homes, all within walking distance was a nice way to cool down, if he was being honest. Even if he didn’t take any special part in it.

Hoshi knocked on an oak door to a quaint little house, standing with a young man who was relatively unharmed. The guy was baby-faced and looked generally shy, which Jevaun guessed had to be because he had just graduated school or was still going in these upcoming months. He wondered what it was like for him, having his life disrupted like that as someone who was still adjusting.

A… little like himself at that age.

A short, old woman opened the door, wrinkly and ecstatic to see the guy.

“Sawyl!” she greeted, giving him a big hug. “It has been so long since I last have seen you!”

The boy grinned nervously. “Mamgu.”

She blinked in shock when she noticed Hoshi beside him and behind him, Deval and Jevaun.

“Is this your girlfriend?”

“No, no, no!” The boy denied. “Not at all! Haha…”

Hoshi smiled politely, giving her a head nod. “We’re… friends, miss.”

They and the boy shared a knowing look. A reassurance of safety and comfort.

“How wonderful,” the woman cooed. “Why don’t you all come in?”

“I’m sorry, miss,” Hoshi apologized. “We should really get going.”

“Oh… Well, you’re welcome anytime!”

As the woman ushered her grandson in and closed the door on a bittersweet smile from Hoshi, the boy, Sawyl, mouthed ‘thank you’ before his final moments with the three foreign-dimensioners ended. Hoshi took a deep breath in and out before they spun around to meet Jevaun and Deval’s faces, melancholy fully wiped from their face as if they hadn’t carried any before.

“Never gets easier…” Deval sighed.

Hoshi hummed in agreement.

The forest filled with screams came to mind. Jevaun faltered a bit.

The other two looked lamentful at the door where they left the boy. They looked endlessly tired and beaten, but they were still here, weren’t they? This was what it was all for.

“You guys…” This drew both of the spacetime benders’ attention. Jevaun smiled. “You guys do good things here.”

They both took it with some level of humbleness. For Deval, it was level 0 as he took it in stride.

The walk back to who-knows-where was peaceful. For whatever reason, the two experts on this sort of thing passed through parks and lively city streets bursting with people and conversation. They didn’t talk about what just happened. Instead, it sounded more like…

“This reminds me of back home…”

“Not for me. My place was a bit… well, colorless. Which is why it’s so exciting to go places that do!”

“Strange how you of all people ended up in an achromatic earth.”

“Right? You and I should have swapped places at birth!”

It usually wouldn’t be very fun to be left out of a conversation, but when the topic is the multiverse, anything’s possible. Jevaun was content to listen to these two talk about the most insane shit he’d ever heard because it was normal to them at this point, and they’d seen some things that sound too cool to ignore. It put his heart at ease to learn more about the two of them, in contrast to the secrets they tried keeping at the start. He felt at ease.

When was the last time Jevaun really enjoyed the outside? It was a good thing the guys in this timeline or universe didn’t live underground like he did. It makes for much better views and a lot more people were wandering about… It was homely. Should he move?

Jevaun was entertaining the possibility when he noticed Hoshi staring at him from the corner of his eye.

He blinked. “What?”

Hoshi shook their head. “Nothing. Just… You’re next now.”

“Didn’t take you for a murderer.”

Hoshi grinned evilly, playing along. “No eligible witnesses here.”

He hesitated.

“Uh, you still gotta get your replacement goober, though!” Deval mentioned to Hoshi. “Remember?”

Everyone knew Hoshi didn’t need a replacement to get Jevaun home, but they’d all play along anyway. Crazy how surviving some insanity together will do that to you. 

Would Jevaun even be able to forget these two after everything? They jump through time and space , he doubts there’s going to be another chance where they meet again, considering that they’re trying to save said time and space. It was a fluke they met and a stroke of stupid he ended up accompanying them in the first place.

So, no. He won’t really be able to. 

So he can wait another day until he goes back to his mostly mundane life.

“Are we ready to head out, team?”

Deval looked back and forth between Hoshi and Jevaun, to which the latter simply stared at Hoshi. They’re the expert. Or one- half of the experts .

“Yeah.” Hoshi stretched out their arms. “It’s been a long day.”

“Alllllright, to bluegirl we go!”

The air flashed ‘313’ as Deval started his countdown.

“Twenty-eight… Twenty-seven… Hey, wait, Three-Thirteen isn’t that far from Jevaun’s timeline!”

“Yes, it is… He came from Seven -Thirteen…”

Earth-713.

Home.

How weird it is to have your home marked down as a number. To Jevaun, it was all he’d ever known. Born and raised, it was home whether he liked it or not. There was never another option. To Hoshi and Deval, it was just a number they would or wouldn’t have to go to someday in a list of millions upon millions.

Briefly, he wondered where their homes were.

Muddy boots clumped down through ordinarily pristine, scarlet halls.

One pair among three was scuffed and broken, worn down from years of use, while the other two were shiny and polished. Accompanying the footsteps were vehement screams and grunts of resistance that have known these halls at least twice now. The first was with hardly any risk… coming up on five years ago now.

Ordinarily, they’d never be overpowered by two flimsy goons, but they’d spent weeks in a hole with no activity. No sunlight. They were running on fumes.

But they had confidence that they could turn this situation around. They won’t be trapped again because there wasn’t anyone else this time. This wasn’t a trap, it was an opportunity to do right by the REDVOLT Operation. They would come back alive and they would arrive with something in hand.

The large steel doors were pushed open by the two guards restraining them.

And there it was.

The long dinner table where only one person remained consistent and only one refused a seat. With eight seats in total, those two were the only ones that mattered. The ones that were swapped out were corrupt in their own ways but the final two…

They believed the final two were irredeemable.

And yet only one of them was present. Only one of them was ever present.

The guards forcibly sat them down at one end of the table, opposite to their — and the multiverse’s — worst enemy. On either side of them were people they didn’t recognize and didn’t care to recognize. They stared down the foreman with undivided attention.

The man himself ate quietly. His robotic mask and the shadow casted from his back turned to the illuminated window allowed for no glimpse of his true identity, essentially a black void that they would come to hate every time they blinked their eyes. Red, it was all red, yet his figure draped in shadow was black.

“Why is it…” He spoke, with an unsettling metallic filter over his voice. “...that every time I’ve seen you here, you come back worse ?”

Beryl’s voice shook with anger as they replied as calmly as they could, “You’ve ruined me. Just like—”

The guards tightened their grip harshly on either of their arms. The foreman put his hand up.

Putting his fork down and pushing his plate away, he stood to lean on the table, towering his shadow over them. They held their breath and bit their tongue begrudgingly.

He observed them for a few moments. They tensed, preparing for the result of his thought process. He adjusted the cuffs of his sleeves as he walked over and past them, pausing to speak with his lackeys.

“Send them to Eighty-Nine,” he ordered. “Lee will take care of them.”

Eighty-Nine?

Their face scrunched up as they huffed. They were forcefully stood up and pushed past the doors they had entered moments earlier. They hadn’t gone to a mutant-type universe since they had left their own and quite frankly, their body wasn’t ready to return to that kind of change again. Especially not now, in their injured state.

“Just kill me now, you prick,” they growled.

He did not falter in his path. “I won’t have blood on my hands.”

Does he truly believe his hands were clean? Who is he trying to fool?

In the hallway, they walked opposite directions. 

Beryl treaded their own dirty footprints while REDMAN walked his false, pristine ones.