Chapter Text
Superintendent Evil shaded his eyes against the setting sun, and watched from above as the figures at the bottom of the hill huddled against one another. Even from down there, they could see the way Elmore bubbled all around them, that there was no point in running. Evil watched the nearest wall of technicolor swell and engulf them. Behind its translucent surface, he could just make out their cartoonish shapes shifting to human. Then the bubble continued to push outwards, and he could see them no more.
The superintendent let out a long breath. It was working. After transforming a critical mass one-by-one with the machine, the universe itself recognized the shift, and was now coming to take all of Elmore to The Other Place. The real world. Safety.
Superintendent Evil stood up straighter and waited for the change to come for him. His old back ached at the movement.
Old.
Wait a minute.
This was unacceptable! He was an eighty year-old man, and that's what he would be in the real world.
Evil pulled at his hands like he was taking off gloves, but the wrinkled skin and odd-numbered fingers stayed. He rubbed at his face as if that would loosen it, pulled at his jowls, grabbed a fistful of his sparse grey hair. He couldn't pull off the disguise because it wasn't a disguise it was what he'd turned himself into.
The bubbles were still advancing. Evil's terror felt dim and distant. A school superintendent had dignity, after all.
Felt. Felt! The machine had a weakness, the, the transformation couldn't hold against a strong reminder of who you were!
Evil had all the memories he needed.
"Look, children. All the mistakes the world has ever made."
Rob screamed, waved his arms, anything to get their attention. "Guys, guys, over here!" Gumball and Darwin were so close, but they rocketed away for Molly, because she was the only one they cared --
"What are you doing here?"
"I came to rescue you!"
Evil tried again, tried to get the rage and nightmares that made up Rob to come back.
The van pulled away, and Rob just barely latched on to the back door. Something sharper than wind razored againt him. It pulled and tore and Rob almost let go under the onslaught. Hand hand arm foot leg forgot the other foot and it had ripped away to a wireframe before Rob remembered to shout that it existed hold tighter to the door face FACE EYE AND MOUTH AND there was a hole straight through his chest, chest chest chest stay solid please all of him stay solid he wanted to exist he deserved to exist please
"I belong here with the rest of the universe's mistakes!"
"I'm not leaving you here."
Gumball saved Rob. Every memory came back to that point. Gumball had gotten his nemesis out of the way. Could have brought his own life back to perfect with the remote. But instead he'd jumped in and risked being erased himself, because he thought Rob was important.
Something sounded like a collapse behind Evil. He turned, and saw another force vying to take Elmore away. The hill was cracking open, illuminating the dusk with static.
The world had gotten all that it wanted out of all of them. And just like Barbara's paintings showed, it planned to throw every last used-up creation away.
Gumball. Darwin. The mall. The school. Elmore. The Void wanted to take everything that anyone cared about, tear them away from each other in the vast space, freeze them so they had no hope of fighting it.
Superintendent Evil stared at the rift. It called for him to give in. Evil glared, and shouted, "You can't --"
"-- HAVE THEM!" The blast and Rob's yell echoed through the dark. Shreds of a suit and a mask littered the ground at his feet. Rob whipped around and ran for the bubble at the base of the hill. He was so close, he just had to make it --
Rob slammed against the wall. What? No! He punched the surface. He pulled back and threw his body against it. No, no, why?! They were supposed to take all of Elmore away!
I haven't been part of Elmore for years.
Rob only had what he'd carried with him out of the Void. There was nowhere set aside for him to live, no records of his existence. Sometimes the world and people would change around him, turning into a videogame or losing all color, but the changes always passed Rob over. Like he wasn't really there.
Rob was still being pushed back, even as the bubble accepted street lamps and trash cans around him. Thick cartoon lines and technicolor rendering turned to metal and plastic and Rob was heading for the rift.
He pulled away and looked for somewhere to run.
If he'd stayed Superintendent Evil he could have at least made it through! Whether it was creating a premade output or fully transforming, Rob had made sure that the machine would recognize anything as a real, living human: a deceased father of a ghost, a mass-produced personal assistant who wasn't supposed to be sentient, a phone displaying the Internet's face, a glitch --
The machine. The machine was still at the school!
Rob ran. He only saw one or two more void rifts, still small, but he had to take side streets and hop fences to get around the growing bubbles. It would have been easier to see his way to the school if it was dark, but the reality-warping light made shadows stretch and shrink and writhe.
Rob made it. No one had bothered to lock the front doors, and Tina, Ocho, everyone he'd assigned to guard the office had left. Rob ripped the helmet off its chair, held it tightly to his head, and wrenched the dial. The easy part was over with a flash of light.
Rob barely took in the thick black outlines surrounding his flat-colored hands. The whispers started: It's better this way. Join them. Follow the orders.
I KNOW.
Rob set the timer and pulled open the door to the central chamber. No sooner had the door closed behind him than a clear liquid rose from the floor's grating. It wouldn't drown him, couldn't, but Rob still held his breath as it submerged him. His eye stayed wide open.
Lights came on and the liquid flowed upwards. A thin, high-pitched mechanical whine played.
It's okay, it's fixing me, I'll still be me, it'll be better
Skin fractured and peeled away in small, uneven fragments.
Patches of blue skin broke off and tore away and there was nothing underneath there would be nothing left he'd die in this static hellscape and no one would come to look for him
There was a pounding throughout Rob's entire being. He was coming apart again! No! No, please! It beat and beat and his chest was convulsing with it.
Please, machine, please, you're trying so hard. You can do this. You can be the one thing I've made that works. You're tired and you're scared but you've just got one more, please, it'll be okay just last for one more --
The fluid swirled faster and carried flakes of brown red yellow past his face and Rob finally shut his eye, curled in on himself as much as the tube would allow, and --
and it drained back down. Rob gulped in air. The beating subsided and centered itself over -- oh. His heart.
Rob swiped at the door until it unlatched, and he stumbled out into the room. The office door itself hadn't been closed. Down the hallway one way, Rob could see a curved wall coming faster than any of the others, disappearing into the lockers and floor and ceiling as it changed them, and down the other way was
a rift. A big one in the floor, crunching as it took pixellated blocks of the world into itself.
Rob had
he had to
He managed to turn back. Get one deep breath out of the fast shallow ones, and take a step. Take another step. Stagger into a run and dive for the bubble.
Rob fell through. The world went black before he hit the ground.
Rob came to.
The floor was cold, and his limbs ached in an unfamiliar way. Light came through the windows gently, still weak enough that everything was grayscale. Rob just lay there, breathing. It was... quiet. Quieter than it had been for him in a long time.
Why was he on the floor?
Rob could hear a bird chirping. The light was stronger now; must be sunrise. He planted his hand so he could push himself up.
His hand.
His hand had five fingers.
Rob stuck his hands out and stared at them. Light brown backs, pink undersides. Short, blunt nails. Black fingerless gloves. The fingers curled and straightened as he told them to.
They were his. Human.
Breathing harder, Rob pushed himself so he was sitting. The ache intensified, and he saw that both his arms and legs were wrapped in clean white bandages. His shirt was (shirt, he had a shirt, it wasn't just a solid block of torso he had a shirt) short enough that he could see his stomach and the edge of some sort of medical pad taped to his side. He poked it experimentally.
OW, okay, okay that definitely wasn't a hole anymore! The shirt and shorts were definitely his own, the same as they were before everything except bigger. But there wasn't...
Rob ran a hand over where the straps would have been, then felt along his back. The backpack was gone. That's right, it had been gone since --
He felt something crinkle.
Rob was sitting on a piece of paper.
He stood, shakily. His heart was pounding (heartbeat! he hadn't had a heartbeat, but now he did and it was in his chest and it was his!) and his breathing still hadn't evened out, so he stumbled to a wall and leaned against it. The papery sound came with him, and this time when Rob felt for it, he pulled it off along with the piece of tape that had attached it to his butt.
It was a sheet of notebook paper with a looping line painted on it in pink. A pig's tail.
Gumball.
Rob's eye narrowed. Ugh, that stunt had been just like him! "Hey, let me permanently make Rob's body even more of a stupid joke! It's not like he matters! I'll erase him, and when I bring him back I'll --"
bring...
Gumball brought him back.
He just had to get involved and wouldn't listen and always ruined everything, but Gumball brought Rob back. Just like he did with the remote, just like Rob had wanted him to do back when...
Was Gumball okay?
Was everyone?
Rob folded the paper neatly into quarters and stuck it in his pocket. He'd figure out something to do with it later. One more look around revealed that whatever the rift had done to the floor, the crossing had fixed. Superintendent Evil's office was no longer filled with high-tech machinery, but instead corrugated metal and coiled wires that looked like they'd been salvaged from the dump. They wouldn't do anything anymore. They didn't need to.
Rob took one last breath, then went for the doors.
Outside, the sky (sky, not static not static notstatic) wasn't full daytime-blue, but it was getting there. The sun didn't have a face, the birds weren't rainbow colored. It was all normal. Rob felt the slight breeze on his skin and looked around.
The road was fairly empty, save for the cars parked haphazardly on its sides. Some even still had their doors wide open. Rob was considering checking an open car for valuables when a bus went by. Which would be normal, except it was a public bus and the school wasn't on its route.
This was as good a next step as any. Rob went in the bus's direction.
As he walked, Rob took more stock of his body. Were the fingerless gloves really necessary? Yeah, he got it, he was edgy, but he'd had a human-acceptable outfit once and these weren't part of it! If it was supposed to represent his right hand going black, then why did he have two of them? And his shoes! These were thick-soled black boots, not his old penny loafers. Again, if it was supposed to match the blocky feet he'd had, why two identical boots?
Oh god, I don't have two eyes, do I?
Hand up to his face, Rob found that he was seeing out of his left, while his right was covered by something. An eyepatch. Flipping it up, he still couldn't see anything out of that side. Okay, weirdly small and off-center eye, but still only one. He smoothed the patch back down.
Picking carefully at the edges of the bandages revealed that they were covering some sort of injury. Burns? The cloth seemed to be keeping ointment against them. Rob figured he shouldn't mess with this too much; he wouldn't know how to re-wrap the bandages.
Rob felt like he was the same height, not that the difference would be as obvious with him as with Tina or Idaho. His limbs were definitely shorter, though, which put the knees and elbows in different places, and his feet seemed bigger unless these were really huge boots and something felt off about his gait, how was --
Rob tripped. He caught himself against the ground (okay, one point for the gloves). Maybe he shouldn't focus this much on how he was moving.
Standing up, Rob saw that he was across the road from the burger place. There was something taped to the window. He crossed the street.
Closer up, that something was a notice. All Elmore citizens were supposed to go to the park for an emergency meeting. There was fine print, but when Rob tried to read that he instead noticed his reflection in the glass.
This was... way different than looking down at himself. Rob had to check that the reflection was tilting his head and waving the same way to be sure it was him. He... he looked like himself, but... The boy in the glass looked so young.
It was easier if he focused on one piece at a time. Teeth that poked out when he bit his lip. Was his iris black? No, more like dark brown. Thick eyebrows (it was strange having two of them, but better than two eyes). The eyepatch that he'd felt, and a bandage he hadn't noticed on his right cheek. Brown, chin-length hair, and out of everything that looked exactly how he remembered it.
Still making eye contact with his reflection, Rob ran his fingers through his hair. It wasn't just soft, the roots were warm, it felt real and alive. He hadn't thought he'd missed it that much, but --
"I'm sorry, but Joyful Burger is closed until further notice."
Rob shrieked and jumped backwards. An arm shot out and caught him before he fell.
"Are you okay, sir? I can promise you, you know me." The man held up his hands placatingly. "Lawrence Needlemeyer, at your service!"
Larry, right, okay, Joyful Burger, Larry. He'd just come from... Rob's field of vision had a big gap on the right side now, okay.
It was bizarre seeing Larry with hair, even if it was a buzz cut. Even more unsettling was the fact that he was wearing his grocery clerk outfit instead of the red Joyful Burger shirt. Which... shouldn't be that weird, but Larry was always in perfect form for whatever job he was doing.
"What's your name?" Larry asked. Then his eyes went wide and he started babbling that it wasn't an insult, truly he valued and remembered each and every customer, but what with the city-wide shapeshifting and all...
Rob couldn't focus on the words. Larry didn't know him on sight. He didn't look at Rob and see the criminal who held a bus hostage, or the loner who bought rope and sawblades, or... the villain.
Rob could be whoever he wanted.
Larry's expression shifted again. "Seriously," he said, "Do you need any help?" Larry must have caught Rob looking at his reflection again, because he read the flyer out loud to Rob in full. He then said, "Are you looking for your parents? You'd probably find them at the town meeting. A lot of people got separated in the commotion, so they're making nametags and sorting everyone out. I can take you there, if you want."
Larry offered his hand.
Rob took a step back. He forced his voice lower. "I was just... heading home, actually. Sorry, I got... distracted."
"Do you want a lift? The Fervidus Pizza Delivery Moped is only to be used for business-related transportation..." Larry trailed off. Then he grit his teeth and pulled off his nametag. He tossed it and his hat to the ground. "I have the keys and my manager isn't looking. I can get you home." And if seeing Larry in the wrong uniform was strange, this was unbelievable.
Rob shook his head, and again, kept his voice unrecognizable. "It's nearby." He was still wearing the yellow and red, and had bandages all the same places as the static limbs and patches. Even if no one was at the park who could tell who Rob was, they'd remember seeing the guy with the eyepatch and figure it out soon enough. Rob just needed to lie low and come up with someone else to be. Change his clothes, maybe make up a new name. He'd use his hideout while everything healed, and then he'd come back.
Larry stared intently, but he relented. "Get home safe, kid. There's gonna be someone really worried about you."
Maybe there was another injury Rob hadn't noticed, because at those words he felt like he'd taken a blow to the chest. He nodded tightly, thanked Larry, then turned and headed for the empty warehouse.