Chapter Text
Parappa found himself in a mysterious labyrinth.
In that mysterious labyrinth he had been multiple times.
It was always after he went to bed – he’d be conciliating sleep, the landscape that becomes the world of dreams would begin to form and instead of a lovely fantasy world or a spot around town, Parappa would find himself in a strange hallway full of artificial greens and where the only possible thing he could do was to walk, and walk, and walk, and only keep walking…
...Whenever he found a door at the end of the hall, he’d end up only walking more, and more, and more.
Sometimes he’d end up going in circles after ending up in a maze.
Sometimes, he’d see other figures: human, animal, robotic, object-like – some familiar, some unknown, some going on what he could only assume were similar journeys, others apparently opposed to him.
At some point, he had tried to call one of these figures, but it seemed like they didn’t listen. Then he found another one. Same thing happened.
In other cases, some of these figures would seem hostile, but eventually they’d just walk past him.
This went on for a while, passing through each level of the labyrinth, searching for an exit if there was one – until one night, Parappa found himself in a really particular room.
A room so particularly unique, despite seemingly being as uniform as any other, in the fact that it only had a single door.
And that single door... had his name on it.
----
Parappa opened the door, and soon enough he found himself in what seemed to be ruins: the ruins of a city, to be exact.
Buildings were trashed and ruined.
The sky grayed further the longer you stared at it.
And it was desolate enough to not show any signs of activity.
As PaRappa shifted his view, however, he noticed two beings were around: a large, mysterious, ravaging, creature that resembled an armored, but wingless crow of epic proportions and a smaller, similarly unknown figure – after some squinting, he found out it was a girl with rabbit ears.
The crow-like monster would move around, stomping through the scenery and using his feet to claw through large objects and sometimes even buildings. Meanwhile, the girl threw any and everything she could do against it, hoping that at least one of them could hit a weak spot and thus destroy her target.
Bullets, bombs, even rocket launchers – every trick in the book was being used in order to weaken its condition.
At one point, the monster used what apparently was one of its hands to grab its opponent’s body and throw it into an already damaged building to make her fall down – and it was such a dramatic move that Parappa could only stand still.
And he could do nothing, but watch.
But the girl, at least, could do something – she had survived the impact, and while immobilized by the impact, she had this foreboding that someone else was around this place, that there could be someone else she could ask for help, even if for as little as some form of retreat.
And indeed, there was a someone else out there.
----
As the monster only got closer and closer, Parappa rushed towards the scene, towards the entrance of the destroyed building, hoping he could at least save the now severely injured girl.
He wanted to know why he was there, he wanted to find answers, but most importantly… he wanted to save her – as an innately kind soul, he knew that even, if not especially in such perilous moments people were to help others when they needed it the most.
Time, however, started to run out. With every single, increasingly frenetic step he took, the world around him started fading to black.
And just as he could reach his hand out to her, he woke up.
