How to Establish Your Gang and Take Care of the Children in It

Rule 1: Don't Leave Your Goop Boi in the Wild by Himself

Nightmare woke up. That was strange. Moreover, he had the ability to wake up. That was stranger. He sat up, flexing his fingers. Huh. So he had a physical body again. An odd sensation, but not one he was particularly opposed to.

How had he gained a physical body? He'd given his own up in return for forging a connection between him and the Tree of the Sun and Moon. So what had happened? Had he stolen it? Been given it? He really couldn't remember.

What did he remember? His connection with the Mother Tree, the one not from Nightmaretale, but the new one. Going dormant for a long while. Being woken up by someone whose face he could no longer recall or visualize.

And now waking up here. Alone.

What was the reason behind this memory gap? Was his mind simply fuzzy after all his time in a dormant state? Had something else happened?

Nightmare sat there for what was probably twenty minutes to a half-hour, wracking his brain. Something must have happened; one did not simply go from being incorporeal and dormant to having a physical body and thinking with nothing in between. But for the life of him, he couldn't remember what did happen in between. He had a vague impression that someone important had woken him up, and that there had been a lot of negative emotions involved. But other than that, he was completely at a loss.

He stood up, looking around. Where was he? Add that to the list of things he didn't know... He was somewhere unfamiliar, with a thick layer of snow on the ground and a few buildings in the distance. He didn't go toward the buildings yet, since he wasn't sure whether or not he wanted to talk to anyone yet. They could give him answers, yes, but they could just as easily be hostile. Best to figure things out before talking to any potential threats, he decided.

So.

How exactly was he going to figure things out? He was alone, without any memories more recent than at least a decade or two ago, in an unfamiliar place. On the bright side, he had a physical body. On the dark, he could have easily murdered someone to gain that body and was now running from vengeance.

Great.

"Brother!"

Instinctively, Nightmare jumped to the left, spinning to face his brother and ready for a fight. Shattered always wanted to fight, whether physically or verbally.

Or... he had. Decades or centuries or days ago. However long it had been since Nightmare had gone dormant as a spirit. Who knew if his brother had changed in that time?

What Shattered even still alive?

The thought made Nightmare falter, and the hesitation almost certainly saved his life.

Two skeletons stood in front of him, both unfamiliar, and both most definitely not his brother. One wore a blue and white short-sleeved jacket, blue and gold boots, and blue tights. A golden crown rested on his head as well, and he wore a golden cape complete with a hood that at the moment he wasn't wearing.

The other was... bizarre. A white and brown undershirt, a jacket tied around his waist, black shorts and shoes that might have originally been white but were now so colored over that it was hard to tell. He had a smudge of paint on his cheek, and his pupils were two different shapes and colors. A bandolier hung over one shoulder, and he had on a scarf almost as long as he was tall. He also had a large paintbrush almost the size of him and was leaning on it, watching Nightmare with an expression of boredom and vague disinterest.

"Brother," The first one repeated. His emotions were so wild and tangled up that it almost gave Nightmare a headache to decipher. Grief mixed with fury, relief tangled with guilt, sorrow clashing with anger. It was almost too much to bear. "It's me. You don't have to run."