An Uncanny Unmaking (Quest)

[Mickey Mouse]

Mickey Mouse couldn’t tell you how he had gotten here.

The wall had drawn him in. It rose mightily before him, murals of varying quality painted along it. The one his beady little mouse eyes were currently fixated on seemed to tell a sort of story, though he couldn’t place the tale.

A little boy, pale-skinned and brown-haired, sat amongst a brightly colored mound of books. He cradled a periwinkle one in his hand. His eyes shined bright with wonder as golden light erupted out of the book’s pages, the magic of the little novel blowing his hair out of his face and making his cheeks almost seem to sparkle.

The magic of Nos’talgia was truly astounding, because it seemed like the painted figures almost seemed to move. The paint ebbed and flowed ever so slightly, pulsing with the type of life Mickey hadn’t ever seen given to a piece of artwork before. He’d always been partial to the opinion that art took on a life of its own, but never quite this literally. Yet, as he stood watching the different strands of the mysterious boy’s hair flicker past his forehead, the little hero found himself rethinking everything he’d ever thought.

Squee chirped on his shoulder, nuzzling his fuzzy orange fur up against the mouse’s own cheeks. For a brief second, Mickey’s gaze was torn from the beautiful picture before him; the little ‘Imaginary Friend’ perched on his shoulder whirred and buzzed with some sort of urgency, though that wasn’t much different from his normal behavior.

The dang thing hadn’t left his side since he’d dropped those fellas off at the Golden Saucer. According to the receipt -- which, conveniently, no one else on the ship could see either -- this little guy was made to bond with whoever he laid eyes on first, and either unluckily or luckily, that had been Mickey. The mouse would admit that the little guy was cute, but his incessant twittering as Mickey’d set PLUTA to guide the Spaceboat Willie back to Nos’talgia was starting to tap dance on Mickey’s nerves.

His new pals had offered to allow him to hang on the Saucer with them for a little while, but something had been nagging him. First and foremost, the bad news had to be delivered to Viz -- and, well, whoever Viz’s employer was -- that the package had not been successfully delivered to wherever this Inverksie place was. Mickey didn’t like the idea of letting someone down, but Squee wasn’t going to have any other friends, it seemed, and if he were being honest, the whole job had seemed a little sketchy from the start so he didn’t plan on losing too much sleep over it.

He hadn’t even really… made it to the office address Viz had given him, though, because the second the Willie touched down in this neat little place -- ‘the Imagen Nation,’ someone called it -- he’d started feeling real weird. Almost like his heart was literally being tugged on, though he knew deep down that wasn’t possible. Still, he couldn’t deny the pull, and so, with a protesting Proto Man nipping at his heels, he followed where it led.

“Can we go now?” Blues asked, arms crossed a few feet behind the mouse king. “This place is creepin’ me out, Mick.”

Mickey didn’t answer at first, though he acknowledged that yeah, this was a creepy spot. The wall rose up about six or seven Mickeys tall, but on the other side, the overt cheer of the Imagen Nation was replaced with something… much more sinister. Mickey and Blues could barely see the darkness creeping behind the wall, but slivers of it snaked over the top and occasionally emerged from the cracks at the bottom. Whatever was on the other side, it wasn’t something any sane Nos’talgian wanted anything to do with, which is why this barrier had been put up.

Mickey had always found himself called to the darkness. Even back in his first home, the Disney Realms, the whole reason he’d left in the first place was to find the source of the shadows slowly overtaking his kingdom and stamp them out. Now, he could feel something uncannily similar lurking just beyond this wall, and no matter how many times Blues protested or little Squee chirped, the presence invaded every one of his senses.

Sorta without even thinking, he stretched out a gloved hand and pressed it to the wall, grazing his little fingers over the painted books. He half-expected them to feel three dimensional and real, but they didn’t; despite the heartbeat flowing through the picture, it was still just that: a picture.

“Mickey,” Blues’ voice called out behind him, though it had started to sound tinny and out of this world, almost like an echo of itself. “Mickey!”

It was too late when the mouse king realized the paint had started to seep out of the wall and wrap around his fingers. The beige of book pages, the golden yellow and red and blue of the various covers nearest his hands -- they emerged from the wall, ensnaring him like a tentacle and tugging, this time quite literally, on his diminutive body. Squee leapt back off his shoulders, skidding to the ground with a trademark “squee.”

The little imaginary creature’s chirping, the frantic cries of his bestie... these were the last sounds Mickey heard before his entire self was consumed by the wall.

Quest: An Arbiter’s Plea
Mickey Mouse
Post WC: 903
Quest WC: 903/2500

 

[Mickey Mouse]

A great white nothingness stretched out before his eyes, and Mickey felt his body seize up, traumatic flashbacks rushing into his head.

Not this crap again, dangit!

The toothy white monster gosh from his previous universe never reared its ugly head, though. Mickey stood ready, muscles tensed like he was about to pounce, but the reason to do so never came. Probably a good thing, too, as he wasn’t totally sure what he was planning on doing if the smiling guy did, for some reason, pop up here in the Crossroads; wasn’t he supposed to be all-powerful or something?

Still, he had to admit this place looked strikingly familiar. Well -- as familiar as an endless void could, anyway. Maybe it was less that the place’s appearance resembled something he’d seen before and more it made him feel something similar to something he’d felt before?

Mickey always trafficked in feelings. He trusted emotions more than he trusted facts, because the way he viewed the world, the facts never stayed the same for long. Take Gilgamesh, for example: all the facts the mouse king had known about the King of Heroes when they’d run into each other on that cliff pointed to him being one type of guy. Deep in his gut, though, he felt something different, and as it turned out, the facts, indeed, had been… well, quite wrong about Gilgamesh.

That didn’t mean he ignored the way things were, of course. Some things were never gonna change. He’d come to accept those; things like the fact that he probably was never destined to get out of the Crossroads. That he’d probably never see his lady love again. Sure, she’d managed to hop one dimension with him, but the odds that she’d make it all the way over here to a whole second one -- when she hadn’t been anywhere near the rip in space-time that sent him and the preteen machine here -- were, well, kinda low.

He’d already managed to find a whole heap of friends here in this place, but it would always feel just a tad lonely without dear old Minnie.

Of course, that was assuming he hadn’t just fallen through a wall and into a fourth place altogether. The great white expanse still stretched out around him, unmoving, unrippling, and thus far, he hadn’t really been able to even move at all. He didn’t necessarily feel frozen to the spot, but he also didn’t feel the need or desire to do so, and he couldn’t will his brain to want to.

So instead, he just stood there, blinking, looking off into the distance. A few seconds passed before he realized the space before him actually wasn’t completely empty: a small, circular palette, with little blotches of paint in every color of the rainbow as well as black and white, sat just a few feet in front of him. Once his noggin had registered the little wooden thing’s existence -- as well as the set of paint brushes rolling idly back and forth along the group nearby, as if someone had just dropped them there -- energy surged back into his skinny legs and he stepped forward.

Moments later, he knelt on the ground next to the palette and picked up one of the brushes. Something tip-tapped at his brain; an image, almost punching his skull trying to get out. He glanced down at the paintbrush, suddenly flushing across his cheeks, and realized that he had, uh… no idea how to paint anything. He’d never been an artist, really; Minnie had always been the more artistically-inclined of the pair. Sure, conventional wisdom told him that he’d originally been literally drawn into existence by Walt, but had Mickey Mouse himself ever picked up a paintbrush? Or a colored pencil? Or even a crayon? He couldn’t remember the last time.

Keyblades were his shiz, not this.

Yet still he plunged the paintbrush, almost unconsciously, into the paint. He yanked it out melodramatically, blue paint splattering across his face, barely missing his eyes. He looked around frantically for paper to draw on, but none availed itself, and suddenly he realized where he was: this whole place was one big canvas. Was he expected to fill it with this image he had in his brain?

That would be impossible, right? This blanket of whiteness went on forever and ever, didn’t it? There wasn’t any way he could possibly paint anything that could encompass the breadth of this void, and he wasn’t about to try, no matter what type of weird interdimensional vision he was having. And yet, the force that tugged his heart to the wall and now assaulted his brain with this one picture wasn’t about to let him give up without trying. The paintbrush streaked across the ground in a grand, sweeping arc before plunging into the violet paint. His gloved hands serif’d the arch with the purple.

Now, red, something said, and Mickey knew inherently it was his own voice. No one else was here, so it couldn’t have been anyone else, and besides, it sounded just like him. He followed his voice’s instructions, dipping the brush into the red paint and drawing two glowing, red eyes in the middle of the strange, arching symbol. When he’d finished the second, his fingers instinctually let go of the utensil. It clattered on the ground and he pushed himself back onto his butt, scooting away from the thing he’d painted on the ground.

It was so simple, so bare. There was no way he could’ve filled the entire void with it, and yet it begged -- demanded -- to spread everywhere. The tiny space he’d managed to draw it in simply didn’t seem like it could hold it, and suddenly, he remembered the weird darkness that seemed to snake out from the top of the wall, and from cracks near the bottom. Something evil was encroaching on the rest of Nos’talgia, and suddenly, Mickey felt something not altogether dissimilar here.

He watched as the Omega symbol before him began to bleed, the purples and blues mixing together into an inky blackness that started to spread out across the bright white floor, blotting out any light that existed in this weird place. The hairs on his arms began to stand on end and he felt his bones creak and crack as they seemed to freeze in place. Fear crept up his spine, a fear of something he couldn’t even name and place but maybe the biggest, most potent fear Mickey Mouse had ever felt in his entire life. He heard a voice -- his voice again? -- screaming and whispering all at once inside his head, telling him to run, run, run, get the front door out of there!

Get the front door out of where, pal?!

The question echoed throughout the void, desperation lacing his high-pitched squeak as he tried to turn around but felt himself getting more and more frozen as time passed, as each second ticked by, as the inky black paint began to blot out the world.

For what felt like an eternity, the mouse king sat motionless, enveloped in darkness, watching as this empty, white void embraced its dark side.

Quest: An Arbiter's Plea
Mickey Mouse
Post WC: 1196 (according to Google Docs)
Quest WC: 2099/2500 (according to GDocs)

 

[Mickey Mouse]

Had days passed?

Mickey’s eyes fluttered open. Blues knelt over him. A cartoonishly blue sky served as the backdrop for his best friend’s silhouette, letting Mickey know two things: for one, he was still on Nos’talgia, and for two, he was on the heckin’ ground.

“Mick,” the preteen machine sighed, relief washing over him and relaxing his cyborg shoulders. “You’re awake.”

“Yup,” Mickey nodded, followed shortly by a groan. He raised a gloved hand to his head; the world seemed like it was spinning, and every time it spun, it pounded his cranium just a bit. He blinked a few times, trying to eliminate the extra Blueses that were dancing around in his field of vision and maybe wash out the headache-induced tears that had begun to collect in his eyes. “How long was I out, pal?”

“Just a few seconds,” Blues shrugged. “Less than a minute, anyway. But I was worried.”

Mickey’s face scrunched -- a few seconds? How was that possible?

To the mouse king, it felt like it had been literal years. As the world around him started to come back into focus, so too did the strange visions his trip into the wall had brought him. He remembered the palette of paint, the strange omega symbol he’d felt divinely compelled to draw, the great white void, and then, finally, how everything had been sucked up, swallowed up, completely heckin’ blanketed by the inky darkness that seeped from the symbol. He remembered how he’d felt frozen, and how he’d sat, spine locked, the hair on his ears standing at attention, for what felt like ever.

And now Blues was telling him that he’d only been out cold for maybe thirty or forty-five seconds. No way. That didn’t seem plausible -- but then, when had anything in any of these weird alternate universes ever made a lick of sense?

He sat up. The same wall from before was in front of him, emblazoned with the same mural of the mysterious young boy and his mountain of books. Mickey couldn’t exactly tell why, but he seemed to recognize the boy now. Well, perhaps recognize wasn’t exactly the right word, as he still couldn’t place him, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that somewhere, deep in the recesses of his memory, he knew the little kid.

“Squeeeeeeeeeee!”

The little orange puff ball leapt onto his face, smothering him with what Mickey assumed were supposed to be some kind of kisses. Good ol’ Squee Squee -- the Imaginary Friend wasn’t what Mickey expected to come out of that box, but he admitted that in moments like this, moments when it seemed like darkness was swirling around, the affirmation of that little pet who loved you unconditionally was, well, more than welcome. Even if Blues couldn’t see it.

The preteen machine’s brow crumpled a bit. “The imaginary thing again?”

“Maybe if you opened up your robot brain a little, bud,” Mickey smirked, clambering up onto his feet. He nudged Squee onto his shoulder and looked up at the painting, searching it for some sort of clue. “So when did I fall back out of the wall?”

Blues scoffed. “Fall back out?”

“Yeah,” the mouse king turned to his bestie. “I, like, got sucked into the wall, right?”

“Uh, nah,” the Proto Man chuckled a bit, “you, like, reached your hand out, touched it, and then just bashed your head into it and knocked yourself out. I tried to call out to you and stop you but you were, like, totally zoned out.”

Mickey’s brow raised curiously, and he glanced back at the mural. The paint still seemed to ebb and flow slightly, beating with some sort of pulse, though now he began to notice that it wasn’t regular like a heartbeat at all. Rather, it seemed erratic, frantic, or maybe even disturbed, and the more Mickey’s attention zeroed in on the pattern -- or, well, lack thereof -- the more he began to feel the cold emptiness the inky darkness had brought in the void he’d been in. Or, well… dreamed he’d been in, or something.

Goshdangit, this was all so confusing.

He lifted up a gloved hand again, and pressed it to the spot on the painting where the little boy’s face was. He closed his eyes, sucked in a deep breath, and held it.

“Don’t bash your head in again, Mick,” Blues crossed his arms behind him, but Mickey paid him no mind.

His eyes snapped open, and he jerked his hand away.

There it was, woven onto the front of the book the young boy was reading. Before, the crest there had been pretty nondescript -- or if it had meant anything, Mickey had no clue what it was. Now, it very clearly bore the Omega symbol he’d painted on the floor of the void. The mouse king whipped around, his expression suddenly pained, and set his glare on Blues.

“Mickey?” the android asked, stepping forward and placing a hand on his best friend’s shoulder. He gripped tightly, afraid that the mouse might collapse again at any moment, but Mickey remained upright and met Blues’ eyes.

“Something’s real wrong, Blues,” the little hero muttered. “And I think… I think someone real powerful’s tryin’ to tell me I’ve gotta stop it. Someone like… I dunno. Maybe Gosh? Walt? It just feels… so big, whoever it is. But it says we’ve gotta stop it, I know that’s what it’s saying.”

“Stop what?” the cyborg pushed. “You’re not making any sense, Mick.”

“I…” Mickey started, but honestly, he wasn’t sure exactly how to answer the question. “I don’t honestly know, pal.”

He gulped.

“But it’s bad news.”

Quest: An Arbiter's Plea
Mickey Mouse
Post WC: 939 (according to Google Docs)
Quest WC: 3038/2500