Loose Threads Episode 4- Full Tapestry

Voltareon2012 · August 16

RUE
Rue flinches as she accidentally sets her bad leg down on the stone. She lifts it up and begins walking with a limp. It looks something like Refuge City, but all the red phosphor is gone. And the tower is nowhere in sight. She tries to get a better look from atop a pile of cement, but it bends underneath her, and she slides down in an avalanche of old parts of building. When it’s over, her tail is pinned under a rock. Using all the might in her back legs, she heaves the rock off. It lands onto her bad front leg with a slitting noise before rolling away.
She yelps in pain and sniffs at her front leg. She licks the cut, feeling the metallic taste of the red, before spitting it out. A cut and a limp isn’t nearly as bad as being caught by the squares. She knew that they would start increasing until it was time for her father’s final shot. When the Messiah would help the World Machine and bring light to them again, ridding the world of corruption. Hopefully, at least. She tried not to doubt her father, but occasionally it seemed far-fetched.
A soft glow comes from a pile of rubble. The yellow light is muffled and sometimes covered up, and the light hum of the city is broken by the sound of someone softly crying in their sleep. Rue pads her way over and peeks into the rubble and immediately recoils. The Messiah. He’s… smaller than she’d expected. Only a child with blue hair, a wide hat with cat ears, a long blue scarf, and clutching the Sun in long sleeves. His face is wet from tears. She backs up. This isn’t Solstice. It’s not time for her father’s final shot. But these are unusual circumstances…
She nudges the Messiah awake. He wakes up slowly. “Mama… I was dreaming about her again…” He quiets his talk to himself and notices Rue. “A… fox?”
“Hello, Messiah.”
“You can talk?”
“That shouldn’t surprise you.”
“I guess… I’ve seen a lot of weird people, and I’ve seen talking animals in cartoons, but… I’ve never met a talking fox.”
“I suppose…” her tail flicks. “Do you need help?”
“Please,” he whimpers, remembering the pain. “I can’t move. If I try, I get stuck more… or I get cut… or I almost break the Sun.”
“Here, pass it to me. Then I can help you out.” The Messiah hands over the giant lightbulb. Rue pulls over a few tattered rags and places the Sun in them carefully, and out of the way of any rubble. “There. Now, please try to hold still. This might hurt a little bit.” She begins to push away the boulders with his help. A few cuts on each of them is the worst they get before he’s freed.
“Thanks!” he says surprisingly lightly. He gets up. He’s so short, even Rue reaches up to his waist. She nods. “Go get the Sun. Then we can do introductions. How does that sound to you?”
“Alright!” He walks over and picks up the sun in his long sleeves. The glow reflects off his yellow, cat-like eyes. “I’m Niko.”
“I’m Rue,” Rue responds, patting a paw on herself. She hesitates. “You haven’t… happened to meet with… a blue robot with a yellow eye, or a human with a flying machine, have you?”
“…no. I met lots of robots (which was really cool!), but none like that. And… a flying machine? As in… a plane?”
“Do you have flying machines in your world?” Rue asks. “I thought they were just my father’s creation.”
“Yeah, we call them planes.” Niko stops, processing the rest of the statement. “WAIT YOUR DAD INVENTED PLANES?!” His eyes are sparkling.
“Flying machines. But yes.”
“THAT’S SO COOL!!!” Niko turns to look up at the sky. “Izzy! Hear tha…” He droops. Even the ears on his hat and whiskers fall flat. “…oh. Right.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Izzy… they’re gone. Ever since I woke up here, they haven’t said a word…”
Rue holds a paw up to her mouth. “I’m sorry.”
Niko bites his lip with a fang. “They abandoned me.”
“…walk with me, Niko. I need to tell you about something.”
PICHU
Pichu watches as the Eevee barks, “I can’t give the paper to you! When the Devil had it, he was laughing about how he had my soul! If you take it, doesn’t that mean you have my soul?!”
“Listen, I’m sorry! It’s all my mistake… but I made a deal with the Devil. I made a bet with me and my brothers lives and lost! And the only way either of us gets to live past midnight tonight is if I collect 17 contracts! Yours is the last one!” He sticks his hand out a little further, pressing the Eevee up against the wall. “Please! I’m only doing this for me and Mugsie!”
“And I’m doing this for me and Pikan! Take Down!” She bursts forward in a rushing attack that knocks the cup-person’s body into a wall. He quickly catches his head before it breaks on the ground. “Well, a’right, if that’s what we’re doing, fine!” He points his four-fingered hand into a finger gun and starts firing off little blue lasers. He never seems to run out of PP, firing a constant straight beam. Eevee ducks under them, and kicks sand up into his face. His eyes BOING to giant size and he stops shooting to rub them when the Inkay-girl pulls out a blaster and fires it at the cup, sending the head flying into the water. The headless body gropes where the cup just was as it surfaces in the pool. “I’ve dealt with worse than you! Bring it on!” He points out his right hand while grabbing his head with the left (which stretches to reach it) and charges at the Inkay, shooting out a spray of triangle-like bullets that pepper her all over. She uses the distance and hurls a bucket of yellow paint at him. He leaps back. “Paint? Seriously?” She whips out what looks like a big squirt gun full of the paint and sprays the rest of him. The cup blinks through the yellow. “Hollup, I can’t see-” she delivers a flying kick to his head, making it spin around, spraying all the paint off. He finally stops it. “My fight isn’t even with you, squiddy! All I need is that contract!”
“You’re not getting it!” she yells, hurling a yellow bomb at him. The cup looks down at it. “Whuh-oh.” It explodes, sending his hands, arms, body, legs, feet, and head separately into a pile of gold and doodads. The Pokédex flies out of his hand and right toward Pichu. He leaps and catches it in his mouth. One of Cuphead’s hand, atop his straw, points at Pichu. “HEY! Where’d that guy come from?!”
“Sparky!” the Eevee yelps. “Finally, a familiar face! Get me out of here!”
“I ‘unno ‘ow to beat ‘at guy!”
The Inkling spins her squirt gun. “You know what, you watch Vee! I can take a cartoon!”
“Oh, don’t underestimate cartoons!” Cuphead fires off another spurt of energy bullets before bursting forward in a puff of smoke, pulling an anvil out of nowhere, and slamming it onto the Inkling’s head. She explodes into yellow ink. Cuphead wipes off his hands, causing goofy dust to come off. Vee yells, “DID YOU JUST KILL HER?!”
Yellow paint sprays Cuphead’s entire back half. “OW! How are you over there now?!”
“I swam in the ink, duh.”
“…ah, that makes perfect sense. Well, how do you feel about this?!” He leaps up and the white liquid inside his head spews out as he spins in the air in circles, sending it all rushing at the Inkling. She yelps and bursts into the air in the form of a squid, narrowly dodging the attack, then hurling a bomb inside the cup. It twirls around the rim before falling with a sploop with the drink. Cuphead complains, “Oh, come ON!” before his cup is exploded into porcelain shards and yellow ink. The liquid inside becomes a blue spirit of him with a goofy pink heart, and his straw spinning around like a halo. The spirit’s eyes are closed, and his hand are laced in front of his chest. Then a rock falls down the mountain and slams into the cartoon heart. The spirit’s eyes burst open. “HA! PSYCH!” His ghostly arms grow giant muscles and pound Braid up in the air over the water. She yelps and flails as she falls toward the drinks. Vee cries out, “No wait! Sparky, water kills her!”
Sparky responds, “Wow, ‘at’s weird. A’ight.” He sets the Pokédex on the ground and prepares himself, before disappearing in two blinks of the eye and catching her midair, then headbutting her to shore. He falls into the water with a sploosh, then floats to the surface. He crawls out of the water and spews some out. “Did I do it?”
Cuphead, now back in his repaired body, says, “Jimmy jam jones, every single one of you are against me?”
“YES!” They all yell at once. Cuphead looks up at the sky. The moon is up. He glances down at a watch he didn’t have a moment ago. “Two more hours…” He puts up his finger gun again. “I can do this.”
RAYMAN
Rayman’s detached hands pull the guy in green and the pink ball into the air. “Alright, you’re gonna tell me who you two are, and what this castle has to do with the Rabbids!”
The mustachioed man in green screams.
The pink ball happily squeals, “Poyo!”
Rayman turns them around to face him. “I said tell me who you are!”
The green man says, “It’s-a-me, Luigi! I’mma number one!”
The pink ball says, “Poyo!”
Rayman stares in confusion. “Is that your name or is that just all you say?”
“Poyo!”
“…okay then, Poyo. What do you and Luigi have to do with the Rabbids?”
“Poyo!”
“Atotatotato.”
“I’m sorry what?”
“Poyo!”
“Atotatotato.”
“Both of you need subtitles.”
“Poyo!”
“Okie-dokie!”
TAILS

“Ow.”
Tails had his face in the airbag of the Tornado. He lifts it out and pats down his staticky fur. He glances around. “Sonic? Are you the-” he looks down and notices he’s not in the Tornado. He’s in the…
“The X-Cyclone? But… we left this behind with Chris?” He gets out and inspects it. It looks new, besides the crash landing. “How… how is this possible? I’m not back on Earth, am I?” He looks around. There’s nothing but sand as far as he can see. “Doesn’t look like where Chris lived…”
He glances toward the X-Tornado and sighs. “You bring back memories… But I can’t linger on that. Time to go find Sonic and the others!”
He gets into the plane and takes off, flying low over the sand.
RALSEI
“Alright! Here’s my training dummy!” Ralsei gestures proudly to it. It took him an entire day to finish. Midna stares. “Why does it look like you?”
“Um… I didn’t know what else to make it look like?”
“Fine. What do you want us to do with it?”
Ralsei twirls. “I’m about to show you how fighting works where I come from!”
“Assuming you come from somewhere like here, I guess that could help,” Nia mutters. “Right, what do I do?”
Midna snorts. “You’re actually going to listen to the fluffy boy?”
“You shut it.”
Ralsei points at the dummy. “Alright, first show me FIGHT!”
“…wha?” Nia raises an eyebrow. Frisk does not even begin to have this translation issue. She charges at the dummy and slashes it with her knife, causing a burst of stuffing. Ralsei looks slightly horrified. Seeing your stuffed self get nearly decapitated can do that. “Oh-kay, wow! That was… violent.”
Nia says, “Oh, I just attack it. I get it.” She leaps at the dummy and kick it so hard it bends backward. Ralsei stares in shock. “You guys are really good at this…” He turns to Midna. “Alright, how about you?”
“I’m not wasting time on a random stuffed dummy.”
“Please?”
Midna makes the mistake of looking him in the eye. She squints at his puppy eyes. “…fine, fine.”
“Yeah!”
Midna’s hair becomes a hand, the fingers of which become pointed like claws. She shoots it forward, and it tears a hole right through the dummy, spewing stuffing everywhere. Ralsei is horrified. “A-ack… m-maybe let’s move on…”
Ralsei finishes fixing the dummy. “Alright. For the Lightners, let’s do this! There’s something you can do called ACTing.”
Nia squints. “I don’t exactly like bein’ an actress, ya know.”
“No, ACTing is like…”
Frisk walks up to the dummy. A black box appears below her and reads in white letters, ‘You talked to the dummy’.
Ralsei nods. “Like that!”
Nia stares in confusion. “…I can’t summon magical text boxes.”
“Um… try giving it a hug or something? Anything works!”
“You want me to be nice to the training dummy.”
“…I mean, if it’s awkward to do it to the dummy, try it on me!” Ralsei steps in front of the dummy. “Just… try something on me!”
Nia sighs. “Okay. Fine. Your hat is funny.”
“…sure that works!” Ralsei stops when he feels little arms grab him. He looks down and sees Frisk hugging him. “You had no problem ACTing on the dummy earlier!” Frisk stays there and does not move. Ralsei waits a moment before trying to push her off. She does not move for a long moment before finally letting go. Ralsei clears his throat. “And now it’s your turn, Midna!”
“I am not hugging or complimenting you or the dummy,” Midna deadpans.
Ralsei gives her thumbs-up. “Don’t worry! Since you’re a Darkner (or something like that) you get to do something else! MAGIC!”
“Oh, THAT’s something I can do,” Midna snorts. Her hair whips by itself, and a portal appears on the ground. Out of it comes a black-and-blue wolf-like creature that instantly charges forward, bites the dummy by the neck, and tears it to fluff and a single stuffed fabric head before flickering back into particles like how it emerged. Ralsei stares in sheer horror. Midna smirks. “Did I do it right?”
Ralsei makes no intelligible noise as a response, instead staring at the fluff that’s strewn all over the snow. Finally he stammers, “You know what, I think you guys get it…”

ÐęÃťĦçØðĘ
Traversing as code is extremely easy. Sonic.exe finds its way into the files that contains the other universe made entirely of code. It works its way into the save progress. The different strings of so many entities flutter around him. Some glitch and stutter. .exe reaches among them. He can’t decide which would be best to do first. This is like a gold mine. Until they all flutter and move together into a shape. It looks like a cat person, with ears and whiskers, and long sleeves that hide its hands. “You aren’t supposed to be in the program. What are you?”
“ÐęÃťĦçØðĘ”
“What? …are you just my errors taking form?”
“I
aM
dEaTh.”
.exe tears the World Machine to pieces, devouring every entity in the world, every glitch, every piece of code that exists within their universe.