Chapter Text
“ Is everyone ready??” Brian’s voice ran through the small garage he’d gathered his colleagues into. His hand hovered over a large object hidden behind an even larger sheet of fabric. “ This could be the end to all of our toon problems, and you all are the first to see it. You all must feel honored.”
Cathal let out a soft yawn before he took a small sip out of the cup of coffee he’d brought with him that day. “ Did we have to do this so early in the day?”
“ Cathal sweetie, it’s nearly noon.” Belle chimed in, sounding a little worried for Cathal’s sleeping habits.
“ Oh, is it?... Huh” Cathal took another sip of coffee without another word.
“ So what’s this all about Babe?” Dave asked as he leaned back to sit against one of the several rolling chairs that littered the room. Though as he rolled back in the chair he did wind up rolling over an empty Soda can, one of many that also littered the room.
Buck curiously tried to peak around the curtain. “ Tho it’th thome kind of thuper weapon?” Buck questioned as he tried to lift the bottom of the fabric to take just a peek at whatever was behind it, though Brian swatted the fabric out of his hand before he could see anything.
“ Well since you’re all so impatient here it is,” Brian scoffed as he pulled the fabric free, revealing a large machine. It was made of a metal so clean you could see your reflection in it, the center formed a very large archway from which numerous lights dotted around it. “ My magnum opus, my piece de resistance, my finest creation ever, a device that enables multiversal travel !!”
There was a resounding silence in the room before Misty spoke up. “ Um.. maybe put that in simpler terms for us?” She awkwardly chuckled as she finished her sentence.
Brian rolled his eyes, his shoulders slouching as he gestured towards the machine again. “ It lets us travel to parallel universes. If we use this correctly we could even meet versions of ourselves from other timelines!” Brian's eyes sparked with delight as he looked towards his machine again.
“ That’s astounding! You have really outdone yourself with this contraption dearie!!” Belle cheered, clapping her hands together with excitement. Though most of her excitement just came from how proud she was of Brian.
“ How doeseth it worketh?” Holly asked as she peered over the rest of the group to look at the machine.
Brian’s eyes gleamed again as he slapped his hand onto the control panel “ Would you like a demonstration!!!” The rest of the room all nodded at Brian’s offer so he began to type something down onto the keypad. He hit the final button with a flourish and then all of the sudden the machine lit up.
It made a whirring noise for a second before a bright lime green light began to swirl around in the opening of the machine. They could hear the faint noise of birds chirping from the other side of the machine.
“ Now of course I haven’t tested sending anything living through this yet, but I've been able to transport several inanimate objects through it!!” Brian stated as he looked at his machine with an incredibly proud look “ If all goes well we could amass armies of cogs in a mere instant, we won’t just be able to defeat the toons in our universe! But in every universe.”
Several Oohs and Aahs filled the room while Brian soaked up the praise with an incredibly smug look on his face.
But as all good things this wasn’t meant to last, as unbeknownst to the cogs in the room, a toon had snuck into the room. A small pink mouse who’s been exploring and found herself in the garage and had just overheard all of that. The toon in an act of pure recklessness searched around and pulled at any cord she could find, an action that would have catastrophic results.
The green light in the machine flashed a blue, then a pink, then red, then it began to swirl with numerous colors that all began shifting into colors rapidly, becoming an indistinguishable mess of colors. Brian yelled for everyone to run as the colors began to swirl even faster a white light at the center of the opening that began to grow larger and larger.
As the white light reached a critical mass Holly leapt forward with her arms outstretched as there was a sudden burst that filled the room. Everyone’s vision went blank and the last thing any of them heard was Holly cry out.
“ Getteth away! I shall protect thou!!”
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Cathal woke up with his head heavy, he could see a small crack that ran down the side of his screen, though he didn’t really care about it. He was much more focused on his lack of coffee, or any of the food that he had brought with him to see Brian that day.
His attention then shifted to the area around him. It looked like he was at the foot of sellbot towers, but instead of the usually gloomy atmosphere and feeling of corporate oppression, the sky was bright, the concrete jungle replaced by a field of flowers and fluffy grass, and most notably the tower itself looked like it had walked straight out of a cartoon, it even had large animated eyes that happily looked around as the whole building bounced around to the music that played from somewhere in the distance.
“ Whaaaat the?” Cathal grumbled as he slowly crawled to his feet, rubbing his heavily aching head, when all of the sudden.
“ HALT, I shall not alloweth Cogs to enter doth headquarters!” Holly’s voice yelled, but it wasn’t quite like Holly, the voice was a pitch higher than usual and her words had a soft squeak to them.
Though Cathal didn’t have time to question this as he turned to see a horse toon charging at him with a giant sword held above her head. She looked a little like Holly too, her mane was braided back in a look similar to the back of Holly’s helmet, and her visor looked identical to Holly’s, even her eyes were a bright red just like Holly’s
“ Thou shalt not harm mineth colleague.” The real Holly’s voice shouted out, followed by the sounds of swords clashing. Holly appeared in front of Cathal seconds after the sound of swords clashing, Cathal rubbed his eyes a bit as she rather suddenly arrived, his visual sensors must have been damaged with how late he registered Holly’s arrival along with a general pixelated look that the world took on for a couple of seconds.
“ And who mightest thou be!?” The Toon yelled, as she pushed away from Holly her sword held defensively as she and Holly stared each other down. “ Why doth thou looketh like me?”
“ I couldest ask thou the same questioneth.” Holly shot back, her grip on her sword growing tighter as she prepared herself for a second attack from the toon.
“ My name iseth Holly Grayelle, an honorable member ofeth doth toon council. Now I asketh again, who mistest thou be?” The toon’s words dripped with venom, nothing like the toons that they were used to.
Holly was taken aback as she dropped her sword a little bit, before she regained her composure. “ Art thou playing a pranketh on me? If so iteth isn’t humorous.” Holly growled as she took a step towards the toon. “ For I ameth Holly Grayelle, honorable member ofeth the cogs.”
“ Wow all this ye old speak is getting hard to follow” Another voice called from a picnic blanket that Cathal and Holly had failed to notice nearby on the grass. On top of it was a soft purple Bear toon, he had an overturned honey pot on the top of his head like a hat, and two bees that danced around his head with cartoonish diagonal lines following them as they buzzed along.
Cathal squinted at the toon as his optical receptors refocused a bit and the world became less of a mess of shapes and colors. “ Huh… he sounds… kinda like me..”
The toon turned and looked at Cathal with a similar look on his face “ Oh freaky…. I’m getting deja vu” The bear exclaimed as he half heartedly took a bite of a large sandwich he pulled from his picnic basket, the sandwich far too tall to have possibly fit in the basket, but no one put the effort into questioning it.
“ It musteth be the newest trick frometh, doth horrid cogs. We shalt not alloweth thou into our headquarters.” The Horse toon yelled as she charged Holly down. Their swords clashing again sparks flying as the metal blades collided.
Cathal backed a couple steps away as the two furiously engaged in their duel. Both refused to take their eyes off of the other. The toon used her cartoony flexibility to get an advantage in the fight, her arms swinging in wild and unpredictable angles that forced Holly onto the defensive. Holly was hardly able to keep up as she continued to back away from the toon as her attack patterns only grew more unpredictable.
This all culminated as the toon's arms spun around her, her legs twisting around as if she was winding herself up, then like a top she let go. Spinning around so fast she became a blur of white and gray. Her blade was like a saw as it bit into Holly’s sword before she bounced off, her trajectory suddenly changing as she aimed her attention towards Cathal.
She moved too fast for Holly to do much else but reach out and yell for Cathal to move. Though this wasn’t possible as by the time Cathal’s vision caught up to what was happening she was only a foot or two away from him.
Then all of the sudden a unison of voices yelled out from the base of the hill they were sitting on. The two sounded perfectly in sync as they screamed out a very loud “ WAIT”
There was a flash of light, and that was all Cathal saw before his vision once again cut out, plunging the world around him into total darkness.