Dreamcrash

Twenty Eight: Hurting and Healing

Pen drops his hand and the blaster fires.

It takes me a moment too long to notice there's a fourth aura, one of weakened determination, with the destroyers. I don't react in time, only able to watch in fear as Thread teleports someone in front of them. The blast hits that person instead. As the smoke clears, I see a limp figure in a dark purple sweatshirt, scratched and angry, red Soul wrapped in Thread's yellow strings. Patch.

Pen says a well placed word that starts with an 'S'.

"He said put down the weapon and no one gets hurt, and you didn't listen to me. Now look where that got you." Thread gives us a mocking stare. I look at Patch, guessing he would have Codewrited himself to not take any damage, and saw in addition to Thread's yellow strings around his Soul, was a lime X. I remember Three is a Codemaster and realized he must have restricted Patch's ability to adjust his health. "You've hurt one of your friends. I don't think he could take another hit."

As if on cue, Three holds out his hand and a glitching Gaster Blaster appears, aimed at Patch's Soul.

Seed and Pen exchange a look then lower their weapons, signaling for me to do the same. Are we really giving up? Just like that? A smile spreads across Thread's face. I look at Patch and see him, ever so slightly, look at Seed and hold up three fingers, then meets eyes with Pen and starts signing things. 

"You made a good choice. Blackout, kill the other two. I get Pen," Thread says, jumping down. He looks Pen in the eyelights and gives him a mocking smile. Patch's signing looks more frantic, but Pen's pulled his eyes away to look at Thread. "I've been waiting for this moment for a long time. Ever since I killed your little friend. I bet you'll be just as fun."

And that's when Pen snapped.

Eyelights going a hard, cold grey, Pen released a massive magic attack that I've never seen before. It was made up of black energy and whipped around, throwing the destroyers back. Thread lost his grip on Patch and Three's codewrite broke, letting Patch fix his health and join us.

Thread swore. "Alright, that does it." He held his hand out and the yellow scar on his right eye seemed to light up a bit. A vast web of yellow strings appeared in the sky, immediately causing fear to hit Patch and Seed. A single string fell down from the web, and it was wrapped around Thread's finger. I saw Pen give Seed and Patch a knowing look and then prepared to attack Thread. Patch grabbed my arm and the three of us teleported back to the Art Dome.

"Wait! What about Pen? And what did Thread do? What's going to hap-"

"Shut it," Patch snarls. "We need to focus."

A few tense minutes later, Patch finally breaths out a sigh of relief. "Code's copied. If Thread takes the AU down we'll be able to restore it."

"So that's what he's going to do? Destroy the AU?"

"Yes," Patch said, looking down in defeat. "Thread's most likely going to destroy the AU."

"Then what about Pen? Will he be fine?"

"Yes. I highly doubt the Creators will let him die."

"And what about Seed? Isn't he part of Crashtale's code?"

"Well, if the AU goes down, my code will have to be rebooted too, but I should be fine. Just out for a week or so."

"Shouldn't we go help Pen then?"

Patch pauses. "Wait. Do you guys remember what color his eyelights were?"

"A light grey. Possibly white. Why?" I respond. Patch and Seed tense and Patch looks very close to swearing.

"That's... not good."

"Why?"

"Pen's eyelights only go grey or white under two circumstances. One, he's out of ink therefore can't feel emotions. Two, he's..." Patch pauses, nervous. "He's tapping into his real power."

"What does that mean?"

"You're about to find out," Seed says, jumping up from his spot and running to something behind me. I turn around to see Pen, on his knees, and... bleeding?

"Holy Creators. Are you okay?" Patch asks, following Seed. I get up and walk over. Yeah, that's definitely blood. As I approach, Pen looks at me with his pure white eyelights before he falls over and passes out.

We stand there in silence before a sound echos through the Art Dome. It was the ripping of paper. Despite being just paper, it sounded sad. Beside me, Seed takes a sharp intake of breath as I turn to look at the ripped paper. When I look back, Patch is staring at the empty space of air where Seed was just standing. We stand there, in silence, for a moment, before Patch leans down and puts a hand on Pen's limp body.

"I'm going to take him somewhere he can heal. We'll reboot the AU when I come back." He teleported off, returning a few moments later. Taking one look at my face, he sighed, and turned to the big paper in the Dome's center. "Ask away."

"What happened? What did he do? And why was he bleeding?"

"One, Pen tried tapping into his full powers to fight off the Destroyers, and probably failed, but I'll bet he did some good damage. Two, He used a Godmove. Three, I don't know. It's happened before, but he refuses to explain it."

"A Godmove? What's that?"

"Oh gods... well, to start at the top, Creators have the ability to take their dreams, their visions, and turn them into reality. That's how they made the Omniverse. Now, some Creators liked to enter their creation, and could do so by putting part of their Soul into a being of their own creation. These beings, known as Hosts, could channel the Creator's powers and mind. While the Hosts weren't strong enough to make visions reality, they could use magic far beyond what people and monsters like us could do. These moves were known as Godmoves, for obvious reasons."

"And Pen can use one? Is he like a Creator or something?"

"No. He's definitely not. It's mainly from his odd magic abilities. He's Polychromatic and Soulless, which shouldn't be possible with how much Polychromatism relies on the Soul. However, the Creators decided he still had a purpose and allowed him to keep living, so I guess to stop him from dusting, the Creators had to put a bit of their energy into him." Patch walked over to me. "AU's rebooting now. It should take a week or so, but I doubt we'll have to worry about the Destroyers, with how much damage a Godmove does." He sits down. "I'm gonna rest, you can too. You look a bit beaten up."

"So do you."

"Heh,  can handle it."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, I've felt worse. Way worse." I sit down next to him. Examining his aura closer, I can tell he's hurting, just trying to hide it. Without really thinking, I hold a hand above him and focus my powers. I pull on the positive side of my Soul and feel an aura of calmness wash over me, which I try to project onto Patch. When I open my eyes, he's looking at me in awe.

"Why didn't you tell me you could heal?"

I blink. His sweatshirt is still ripped, but most of his wounds are gone. "I didn't know until now."

"Well, now you do." Patch yawns. "Side effects are making the person you healed tired," He said jokingly, then closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep. I leaned back, eyes falling on the ripped paper of Crashtale. The tears are glowing, the paper looking like it was trying to attach itself again. To fix it up. It makes me smile. Things heal. Just like Patch's wounds did, just like the AU will. And maybe, if I'm lucky, my relationship with Dream will heal too.