Pen's grabbed Seed and I and we're in Crashtale before I can react. Seed automatically assumes his flower form and we take off, me tracking Thread's aura. We end up at Mount Ebbot, and I can see Thread standing on a ledge above us.
"Well well well, look who turned up. That was fast."
Pen and Seed ignore him, ready to attack. I summon a silver arrow, trying to push down the worry that I'll lose control.
"No talking? Just want to get started? Alright then." Thread looks at something behind us. "Well, you know what to do."
I feel a sharp feeling in my Soul as blackness descends all around me. Fear threatens to take over as I feel the aura of Blackout walking towards us.
"Night, you've fought this guy, how do we defeat him?" Seed asks, vines ready.
"Blackout uses the darkness as camouflage. Be on your guard or he'll attack you. He uses bones and strings, which seem kind of short ranged," I respond, trying to keep my voice steady and probably failing.
"Short ranged? Good." Pen's tone changes to confident, and his eyelights shift to red teardrops. "Night, tell me when he's about to attack, then get the hell out of here."
I lock on to Blackout's aura, feeling his every move. It disappears for a moment and I blink, confused. Then it reappears, right above us.
"Above!" I yell, quickly moving out of the way. Pen's eyes flare and he slams his fist onto the ground. An explosion of ink hits right where the two of them were. The darkness around me flickers and I focus on the world outside. I hit the ground in Crashtale, Seed popping up next to me. Thread's nowhere in sight, but I can feel something's wrong.
"Uhh... Night? Take a look at this."
I turn around, scared by how alarmed Seed sounded, and saw a very odd sight. Pen was behind us, limp, eyes closed, floating a foot in the air. There were teal strings, the same Blackout uses, wrapped around his legs, arms, and neck.
"What's more alarming, the fact that he's floating or the fact he's caught in strings that are supposed to catch your Soul and therefore wouldn't work on him?" I asked, creeped out.
"Both..." Seed responds. "How can he be ca-"
"Shush," I say, suddenly sensing something. It felt almost like... an aura, inside of Pen, that wasn't his. "That's it. We aren't fighting Blackout in some sort of void, we're fighting him in our heads. In some sort of dreamscape," I realize.
"Correct," An all too familiar voice behind me says. I roll my eyelights and turn around to see Three behind me, standing on a web of stings in the sky. "You're a smart skeleton, Night."
"He's not smart, he's just nosy," Says Thread as he teleports next to Three. I found it kind of funny that Three was at least a head taller than him. "Blackout, release Pen. I want him to see this."
"Must you always be such a showoff?" Three asks.
"Must you always be so annoying?" Thread shoots back. I hear a thump behind me and turn around to see Pen drop to the ground and immediately summoning a Gaster Blaster. Blackout appears next to Three, and I see him for the first time in the real world. His colors look a bit more muted and his eyelights less noticeable, but the main difference is his right eyelight has gone from orange to red.
Pen holds out his hand, ready to fire the blaster at a moment's notice. I summon a few arrows and Seed whips out his vines.
"Alright, just put down the weapons and no one gets hurt," Three says, an ominous glint in his eyes.
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.