Chapter Text
“Eli.”
A voice cut through Eli’s thoughts. It had been happening more and more lately, being lost in his own mind. Not that he could help it. Everybody said he was mainly a doer, an improviser, a reckless action-taker, and they were probably right. Maybe that was why stillness felt so uncomfortable to him. Well, relative stillness.
The last 5 years had been packed with distress calls and all sorts of issues to attend to. People relied on the Shane Gang, that was the way of things, that was their duty. But ever since they sent Tad down that damned hole to the Deep Caverns, things changed. Not all at once: there had been and there always be people who crave power and might, Eli knew that, but Slugterra did seem to have gotten rid of the disease that subtly made its way into their lives some decades earlier.
The disease that, in a way, had killed Will Shane not once, but twice.
A disease known as Black and his legacy, whose ambition and ruthlessness to people and slugs alike was yet to be equaled by any other contenders. Hurray for the Shane Gang.
“Eli”
He blinked a few times and he focused again, turning around from the bullseye he was facing, but he could have sworn there wasn’t anyone in sight. He recognized that voice, but he couldn’t quite place in his mind to whom it belonged.
Maybe Kord was right, he really should relax more.
“You heard that too right, Burpy?” Eli turned to his shoulder to ask his trusted companion, who nodded, then shrugged his tiny arms in confusion. They both scanned their surroundings with their eyes to no avail. He was tired, but not that much tired.
“This isn’t funny guys, c’mon! Can we put the brakes on the pranks?”
Kord or Pronto were surely making some crazy bet, while Trixie hid somewhere filming the whole thing. He wasn’t getting shot at by a Flatulorhinkus for the umpteenth time, that was for sure.
There weren’t enough showers in the world that could get rid of that foul-
“ELI”
This time the voice was strong, echoing, deep. But it couldn’t be, it shouldn’t; he hadn’t heard that voice in years. Burpy jumped into Eli’s blaster, which he raised now, looking toward the direction it clearly came from. This prank had to be a good one.
He frowned, taking wary, slow steps away from the bullseye.
-Splash-
Eli cursed himself for trying a few new moves with Chiller earlier. He must have been outside the hideout training for quite a while now, the ice almost completely melted into some water ponds. He instinctively looked down into the water and-
“Did you miss me?”
Eli gasped and recoiled in pure shock. His blue eyes were looking back at red ones, darker hair, and greenish, slightly cracked skin. He immediately looked on his shoulder in the reflection for the tiny creature that had been a huge presence in his mind, to whom he had been somewhat connected since it briefly had haunted him years earlier. Not only him, in fact. No, don’t go there.
“How did you…? How is this even possible?” Eli asked, panicking. “You were gone, you’re…” The slugs in his belt squeaked and tried shrinking themselves, while he fumbled deciding where to point his blaster at.
“Am I?” that deep, ghoulish voice, intertwined with his own, mockingly asked. “Was I ever gone from your mind? Or are we one and the same?”
Eli fell to his knees, shutting his eyes and clutching his head as a sudden headache took over him.
A black eye with a red iris flashed in his mind, until the iris took the shape of another red circle, the kind he hadn’t witnessed since his father had fallen into the Deep Caverns yet again.
A man was clinging to what remained of the ground as tightly as he could.
“You have no idea what you’re doing…corrupting slugs? You could destroy all Slugterra!”
Eli recognized a fleeing figure to be Dr Thaddeus Black. A blink of an eye, and suddenly he found himself at Stalagmite 17, a burning rage coursing through him while he punched the glass wall.
“…The so-called Burning World, for example?” Black enquired.
Eli already knew how that conversation went, but a recurring litany wouldn’t allow him to listen. “Find a slinger. Build a new army”.
Yet another sharp throb shot through Eli’s head, and by the time he opened his eyes, the clear water of the reflecting pond had been replaced by a far darker, redder substance. The cavern walls were unmistakably black. A transformed purple slug flying overhead was emitting gold, circle-shaped sonic waves, a young man watching in the distance.
“Find a slinger. Build a new army”.
“Black, stop this! You have to stop it! Black!” The raven-haired man desperately shot his Infernus. “Find my son, find Eli, give him the letter”.
The last word echoed in Eli’s head more times than he could count. He was now kneeling, his grief far too big for the small body of the boy he was again. A floorboard in his bedroom had just been set aside; a star-studded case just opened.
“Eli”
This voice Eli was eager to listen to.
“Dad!” He couldn’t find him anywhere. “Where are you? Dad!”. Panic, hopelessness. He let go of the letter he was holding, rushing to his feet. The displaced floorboard he stumbled upon creaked sharply. “I need you back!” He screamed.
“I never left”.