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It was real.
It was actually real.
Shanna just took a moment to stare on at the yellow cube drifting aimlessly in front of her, right at the center of everything, before she stepped into it.
She could feel her body shaking with every step and breath she took.
The Time Room was actually real, and she was heading into it.
She heard rumors and legends about it, scattered about like leaves in a storm.
A supposedly single room place, located right at the very center of the multiverse and outside of the grasp of time, yet the source of that ever flowing force. And contained within… a mythical figure known only as Prismo the Wishmaster.
True to his name, he would grant a single wish of whoever found him, located away from everything in his abode, reportedly with no limits to whatever he was able to grant. Infinite money, eternal life, super strength… even the changing of major events in time. He could do it all.
And Shanna was actually at his place. She actually found him, he was real!-
She took a moment to breathe and calm herself. She couldn’t let her excitement overtake her. Not here.
In, and out. In, and out. Just focus on your breathing. She thought to herself, as she leaned against one of the bright yellow walls to the sides of her. Just… keep your cool.
She regained her composure, mentally readied herself, stepped down the flight of stairs into the Time Room proper…
…and fell from a high ledge, right onto her face.
She mumbled to herself, rubbing her head as she slowly sat up, barely noticing the pink shadows at her feet.
At least, until they spoke.
“Wow. Haven’t seen an entrance as graceless as that in years, man.” A masculine voice with a slight lisp to it spoke out, electing Shanna to jump up and look around, her eyes settling on the towering shadow before her. “Not like those really… matter here. Anyway, I’m Prismo, a-”
“Wait.” Shanna said, cutting off the pink shadow as she took him in. He was in the shape of a typical human being with its head turned to the side, with short, presumably curly hair, and blue eyes. “... You’re Prismo?”
“...Yep. I’m the real deal.” Prismo said, smiling and spreading his arms out.
“...Really?” Shanna inquired, still having trouble believing that this was the fabled wishmaster at the center of the multiverse she had sought for years. “You’re so… flat.”
“I sure am. Heard that like, a billion times.” Prismo snarked back. “...So, what’s your wish?”
Shanna paused.
…What was her wish?
Shoot… she didn’t think this through. She spent so long trying to prove this dude existed… that she didn’t even consider thinking up a decent wish.
Well… why not try the age old attempt to hack the wishgranting system?
“I wish…” she started, “...for more wishe-”
“No.”
“...No?” Shanna said.
“That’s like, one of the two, maaaaybe three things I can’t do.” Prismo confirmed, “You got a different wish?”
…Shanna thought for a moment, pacing around the yellow cubic room she was contained within, as she thought up something to request, eventually coming to a conclusion.
A very silly conclusion.
“I wish for more wishmasters.”
Prismo paused, his visible eye going wide.
“...Nobody’s ever asked for that before, okay…” he admitted.
“Is it allowed?” Shanna asked.
“I-I mean, yeah, it 100% is, but… well, you know how wishes are.” Prismo said. “Even a perfectly selfless, well-intentioned wish can lead to utter insanity if the wisher doesn’t state, like… every little detail about it. It’s a monkey’s paw kinda deal, y’know?”
Shanna went quiet, letting his words bounce around in her head for a moment, before saying something she had a feeling would seal her fate:
“I’m still sticking to my wish.”
Prismo shrugged.
Well, he’s granted worse wishes before. What was the harm in this one?
A flash of technicolor light overtook the human before him, and instantly, a sensation akin to pins and needles overtook her entire body. Her shadow faded away, along with any bits of shading around her body.
The pain grew worse out of nowhere, an intense pounding sensation forming on her ribcage as she collapsed backwards. Instantly, she started writhing on the thankfully clean ground beneath her as she tried to get back up, to no avail.
It felt like she was being compressed, bones slowly being crushed under the weight of a great, invisible hydraulic press.
Her head moved on its own, forcing her to look to the side as her eyes twitched frantically, matching her growing panic and confusion, as the mounting pressure grew worse and worse by the second, until…
Crack.
Crrrrack.
Her ribs were being shattered, one by one, the invisible weight pressing down on both them and her fragile organs contained within, crushing them, but denying her the mercy of death. Her eyes bulged out of their sockets, just for a moment, before being forced back in, a pink tinge around them as blood slid out of them.
And they just kept growing flatter and flatter, bones snapping and muscle tearing all the while.
Prismo couldn’t help but wince a little. Sure, he’d seen a lot of nasty stuff in his time, but this?
This took the cake and ate it too.
A pink discoloration formed on Shanna’s toes, creeping up her feet as her toenails fell out and she kept flattening, basically sticking to the floor of the time room at this point like some macabre rug. The discoloration, as it crawled up her never shaved legs, killed every hair follicle in its way, forcing the strands to fall off her body, and into the legs of her pants.
As it reached her groin and yanked out her pubic hair, her privates sealed themselves up and her breasts flattened into her chest, nipples fading away into her skin along with them. Her clothing then vanished, leaving her nude as her memories regarding her gender shifted about, warping and rippling ever so slightly so, to her, she was always male.
This did not change the fact that, despite lacking any bits that could be seen as sexual, he was still nude and more or less stamped into the floor, suffering from countless internal injuries that, while he could feel miraculously healing as his internal workings shifted into more cosmic materials, were still very painful and prevented him from moving much.
Needless to say, he wasn’t having much fun. And the fact he was being watched by the person who did this to him in the first place didn’t help one bit.
As the pink discoloration marched up his chest, helping press him flatter and flatter against the flooring beneath him as it whittled away at his abs and slimmed him down, he felt himself slowly grow in size, form extending first across the yellow ground and then up against the walls, crawling up them like a spider as he grew bigger and bigger.
At this point, his body was half decal, and half shadow, clinging to the wall as his body kept shifting more and more by the second.
It didn’t take Prismo very long to realize just how the monkey’s paw caved in for this poor human. Granted, he knew something like this was bound to happen with a wish like that, but man…
…He kinda wished he was filming this. He did know some nasty people who might be into this sight… oh well, too late to start now.
As the discoloration hit his shoulders, it seeped the definition from them, removing the muscle mass and slimming them down, before moving onto his arms, continuing that pattern as it slowly reached his hands. Chipping away at muscle and slendering down his arms, before coloring them that dreaded pink shade. It also forced out the little hairs present along them, before it moved onto his hands, pulling out his fingernails and slimming them down.
Now, there was one final thing left.
His head.
His neck slimmed down, the pink discoloration moving through it with grace before making its way to his face proper. His nose pointed out, extending outwards and reshaping as his ears sunk into his head, hearing thankfully still remaining. His hair shortened, wrapping around his head and shifting in texture even as it turned that same pink the rest of his body had become, becoming curlier even as it meshed perfectly with the rest of his changing form.
An immense pressure overtook his eyes, including the one more or less hidden by his now flat head being stuck looking to the side, as they seemingly were pushed back into his face, only to begin to pulse and leak fluids as they caved in on themselves, sclera dribbling down his head and the wall as his irises and pupils fell out, replaced by a pair of simple blue dots in the center of two holes that seemingly granted him 360 vision, right where his eyes would be, had he never made this wish in the first place.
And with that… he was a perfect clone of Prismo.
Well, almost perfect, anyway.
In his head, new, odd, fuzzy memories drifted, as he gripped it and moaned, his masculine, slightly higher pitched and lisped voice ringing in his invisible ears. Memories of countless individuals from across the multiverse, all so very, very different in appearance, yet they all rang the same to him, minus a few select deities and cosmic beings, and… some dog…
Prismo, meanwhile, was pondering what he just did.
“...Oh-kaaaay then.” He said, still looking at the very confused Shanna. “Guess I got an apprentice or companion or… something, now.”
“I-” Shanna said, looking at Prismo. “I thought you’d just… duplicate, or… something…”
As if to unintentionally rub salt in his wounds, Prismo did just that, splitting into two perfect clones of himself.
“Yeah, I can already do that.” He confirmed as he did the act. “It’s still me, though.”
Shanna tried to argue with his actions, but all he could do was let out several frustrated sounding syllables in his mixed anger and confusion, and when he finally came up with something to say?
A pink finger was put up to his mouth.
“A-bu-but! You’ve got a lot to learn about… being me.” Prismo interrupted. “Man, I wish I had something cooler to say…”
Shanna could not bring himself to argue with him anymore, at the moment.
~~~
“...Pickles?”
The Time Room was… a lot more than a singular room, it turned out.
After cutting him off, Prismo magiced up some stairs, and brought Shanna down with him to see… a mess of twisting stairs and angles, in perfect, uncontrolled chaos, seemingly going on endlessly.
He could barely even understand what he was looking at. Prismo, however, could. Granted, he lived in this place for… possibly his whole life, so it made sense.
So, he brought him to a room Shanna did not expect a cosmic being that could grant almost any wish and lived outside of time and space as we knew it would ever have:
A larder, used only for the creation of pickles.
“Yeah!” Prismo cheerfully said, presenting his personal brand of pickles, usually given to those close to him. “I just think they’re really good, and ‘Prismo’s Homemade Artisanal Pickles’ just… rolls off the tongue nicely, don’t you think?”
“No.” Shanna bluntly stated. “I have… no idea why you made these stupid things, nor why you felt like this was the first thing you needed to show me.”
Prismo looked quite offended for a moment, before his expression snapped to anger.
“Now, listen here, young me.” He hissed. “You shut your mouth right there-”
“Can you even eat?” Shanna snarked at the cosmic wish-granting being who was about to lecture him as if he was a schoolkid.
“Well- of course, but that’s not the point.” Prismo said, face shifting to mild confusion before turning back to anger. “The point is that you decided to just shit talk my brand out of nowhere-”
Oh boy.
~~~
He had to sit there for what felt like hours, as Prismo talked and talked and talked about pickles, their benefits, and his brand of them.
He didn’t even know there was that much to say about them!
When his weird infodump rant was done, he was forced to admit that pickles were kinda cool before being sent on his way, back into the twisting maze that was the Time Room’s hidden sections.
He was just exploring it, trying to make sense of the endless ledges, sharp angles, and cubes, all along maddening corridors and tunnels, with no clear sense to it all. How the hell did Prismo know where everything was in this place? Sure, he lived here, but… everyone needs to have limits on understanding stuff like… this!
Ugh, it was just so stu-
“Having fun?”
Shanna was snapped out of his thoughts when a familiar shadow popped up behind him, smiling as he jerked around to meet his gaze.
It took him a moment, but he collected himself, trying to play it cool and pretend they weren't caught off guard by his sudden arrival.
“Uh- yeah.” He replied, forcing a smile through gritted teeth. “I sure do… llllove nonsensical amounts of stairs… so much fun trying to figure out where anything is…”
“Ehhh… you’ll get the hang of it.” Prismo stated, as if his words were fact. “I don’t fully know how big it is myself, to be honest.”
…What.
“...Explain.” Shanna demanded.
“So- it’s like some kinda open world sandbox thing- think Minecraft- if you know what that is.” Prismo explained. “It keeps generating the further you go, and it’s just about infinite. But, places that are already generated stay the same, and can be decorated to my- our pleasure. Also, it gets funkier the further you go. Once I was messing around and came across this weird endless tesseract looking landscape. Pretty funky.”
“...I kinda get it, but...” Shanna said, after a pause. “I also don’t. How are you so casual about this?”
“Dunno. You try living in it-” Prismo replied, before remembering who he was speaking to. “Oh, right. Too soon?”
Shanna shrugged in response.
~~~
“...Oh, and then my dear wife, god bless her soul, walked in as if she knew what was going on. Didn’t even bat an eye at all the blood! She just stared at me, Dale, and Roland as if we weren't trying to kill each other over something silly, and then said ‘oh, honey, did you want some iced tea?’ And, granted, I kinda did, but I was just a little creeped out by her lack of reaction to everything…”
Prismo blankly stared at the person in front of him as he rambled on and on about stuff he didn’t really care about.
He wasn’t paid enough for this. Or at all. But, alas, someone had to listen to this person talk about random junk before he actually got to his wish, and he sadly had to be that someone.
Sometimes, his job was a pain in his basically nonexistent a-
The entrance to the hidden sections of the Time Room opened up, as the two figures in the main room jerked their heads towards the duplicate of the wishmaster poking his head out of the stairs.
“Hang on…” said the mortal in with them. “I was told there was one Prismo!”
“Yeah, they’re my… apprentice. Who looks exactly like me.” Prismo responded. “Let’s just say that.”
Shanna shrugged. I mean, he wasn’t wrong…
“...I was hearing you ramble on about… whatever that was.” He said, looking at the little mortal as he fully rose into the room. “You gonna make a wish, dude? He d- er, we don’t have all day- or we might- or- …man, this outside of time junk is confusing…”
“I mean, you’re getting the hang of it, so you’re adjusting.” Prismo comforted, before looking back at the mortal preparing for his wish to be granted. “Anyway…”
“...About that wish…”
The pair of wishmasters stopped, as they realized they had spoken right at the same time.
Prismo stared at Shanna, grinning playfully, as the former human couldn’t help but break into flustered stuttering over what they just did.
The mortal, meanwhile, was just confused.
~~~
Well, this wasn’t something Shanna expected to see.
Some old man, peacefully sleeping on a very soft looking, floating bed, blissfully unaware of his surroundings.
He thought mortals didn’t live here. Especially one that felt so… familiar. But that couldn’t be right, could it? He never met this dude in his life.
Was he just some guy Prismo really cared about? He had fleeting half-memories of him, so… maybe. Or perhaps Prismo forgot who this dude was. Maybe he wouldn’t be too mad if he just… woke h-
“Dude, be careful.”
Prismo whisper shouting at him broke him out of his train of thought.
Before he could yelp in shock, Prismo put a finger to his lips, grabbed his arm, and pulled him out of the room.
“...Dude, who the heck was that?” Shanna asked, after they were a fair distance away from him.
“That’s… kinda my mortal body.” Prismo replied. “I’m just the living dream of a sleeping old man, heh… and I guess you are too.”
Shanna thought back to that man, now with the knowledge of who he really was in his head.
…He had no clue how to feel about that piece of information, as he let that information sit and simmer in his mind.
“Don’t get too worried about him waking, though.” Prismo consoled, in his own odd little way. “There’s like, no way a mortal can come here without our consent.”
“...I’m just caught up on us basically sharing a body now.” Shanna commented.
“Heh. Monkey’s paw.” Prismo chuckled, before switching his tone to a more comforting one. “But… you’re not just a clone of me, okay? You still got your own origins, man. Don’t let the fact we’re both Prismo bum you out too much.”
Shanna smiled, a little more content with their new, strange life.
“...Thanks, man.”
~~~
Shanna needed to stop thinking that whatever they saw was the peak of the weirdness he would see in his new life.
Because every damn time he thought that, it would be about five days until something else would happen that would utterly top the previous “top weirdest thing I've experienced as a wishmaster.”
But… he felt comfortable believing that this was probably in the top three.
Prismo, and by extension, him, were just chilling with some space owl, floating wolf head, and the goddamn grim reaper, among other weird entities.
Needless to say, he was a little overwhelmed by all of this.
He needed focus. Something mortal, something that could and would die, something he could understand…
He silently stared at a weird, yellow dog that stood on two legs, a part of him feeling almost… drawn to him, in some weird semi-romantic sense. He had no clue why, as before now, he had never even seen this dog person, but…
…he liked him. He was a funky dude, and something about him made Shanna smile.
“Heh.” Prismo chuckled. “Looks like we share the same favorite guy now.”
“Wh- no!” Shanna denied, even though a bit of blush could be seen along his face. “I’m just… trying to distract myself from… all this.”
He gestured to the array of strange, vastly powerful beings around the time room, just partying it up like it was nobody’s business.
“Yeah, weeeell… you’re really gonna need to get used to everyone.” Prismo said, a bit of guilt in his tone. “I mean, Jake’s great and all, but I kinda… host these kinda frequently? Like, I guess once a month or so, even though mortal time measurements don’t really ma-”
“Hey! Prismos!”
The voice of Jake snapped the two wishmasters out of their thoughts, as the original Prismo dashed over to Jake, happily listening to him ramble about stuff.
Meanwhile, Shanna was caught up on being called Prismo.
Sure, it wasn’t his name, but… it felt right. More fitting than his old name, now that he thought about it. I mean, they were basically the same guy now, so…
He put a hand up to his flat face, trying not to blush at the thought of being called Prismo by others, and having this weird desire of his validated.
God… what was he going to-
“Yo, dude you hearing this?” Prismo shouted, snapping him out of his thoughts.
…Maybe he could put that desire on the backburner for a bit.
He rushed over to Prismo and Jake, ready to listen to whatever weird tales the latter had to offer.
~~~
It was a slow “day” today.
Nobody had entered the time room thus far, and the two wishmasters were more or less just… chilling in complete silence.
At least, until the older one spoke up.
“...Man, this is awkward.” Prismo stated. “Something on your mind?”
“Yeah.” Shanna said. “I’ve just… changed a whole lot. Wonder where everyone back home thinks I’ve gone. You think I still have my house?”
“Ehh, probably not.” Prismo commented. “I mean, we can take a peep at what’s going back on at your hometo-”
“Nah, I’m good, but thanks for offering.” Shanna responded. “It all just… feels so distant now. Like they’re some weird dream byproducts- no offense.”
“None taken.” Prismo said. “Guess that’s how memories are. You grow distant from someone, and when enough time passes? Boom, you can’t even recall their name. Trust me, I’ve met countless wishers in my time, and I can only remember the names of, like… a handful of them.”
“Oh, is Jake one of them?~” Shanna chuckled, a grin spreading across their face.
“Wh-” Prismo stuttered, blushing. “D-dude! We have the same feelings regarding him!”
“...You know what?” Shanna replied, as blush spread across his face as well. “Fair.”
“Glad we’re even… Prismo.”
Sha- Prismo froze up, smile fading into a gasp as his jaw dropped, his other self simply smiling.
“What-” He said. “H-how did you k-”
“Just a hunch.” Prismo confirmed. “Plus, we’re the same guy, so I guess it makes sense you’d feel comfortable using my name.”
“...Yeah.” He said, smiling. He felt… kind of at peace with that fact now. He was Prismo, and… that was okay. He actually liked being him, now that the shock of what happened so long ago had worn so thin it tore itself apart. “...Also, sorry about insulting your pickles.”
“It’s cool.”
Prismo gave him fingerguns, and he gave him some back.
This… this was his life now, he supposed. But it wasn’t bad. Far from it. The monkey’s paw of fate curled inwards, hoping to torment him, but… he learnt to change what he saw as horrible into something he actually loved. Sure, he had help along the way, but still.
Maybe he could leave his past behind him, and start anew here. I mean, he was already unrecognizable, so… why n-
“Oh! A guy’s here! Positions!”
The original Prismo’s voice snapped Prismo out of his thoughts, as the pair quickly shuffled along the walls of the time room, angled just right so they’d be looming over their new visitor.
And, as the figure slowly stepped into the Time Room, Prismo wondered what they’d be wishing for, and how many people would share that very same wish.
He had eternity to find out.