Chapter Text
Purple fractures tore across space and time, devouring every square inch they could find. The rift grew bigger, hungrier, with each passing second. The SMG4 crew watched it helplessly. Puzzles and WPNZ watched it, shocked at its sudden mutation.
“It’s…It’s too late,” Saiko murmured, barely heard over the swirling vortex.
“One of you idiots can fix it, right?” WPNZ demanded, rushing past Puzzles and up to the SMG4 crew. Of course they could. Puzzles was sure they’d tame the rift. They’d handled plenty worse.
“We have to be able to do something!” SMG3 shouted to SMG4, who was busy mashing every button on the YouTube Remote he could find, clearly looking for a Rift Off-Switch.
Then, slowly, SMG4 stopped. “I…I don’t know what we can do,” he said. “I think…this is it.” The crew, WPNZ, and Toomp looked up at the expanding vortex limply, clearly convinced it was about to swallow them whole, taking the rest of the world with them.
…What?
Would they really be so spineless? No off-switch, that’s it, it’s over? Puzzles wouldn’t stand for it. Surely, there was more to be done, more options to try. The Remote could do anything for crying out loud! Why not plug the hole, or stitch it closed, or…
Or…
Puzzles rushed up to SMG4, determined, wrenching the Remote from his hand.
“Have you no creativity?” he scoffed at the YouTuber, brandishing the Remote high.
Just as the ground rumbled.
Members of the crew cried out, startled at the quaking earth, and Puzzles himself nearly lost his balance. Quickly, the performer stabilised. This was the rift at work; he had to shut it down before something worse happened. He readied his aim once more, about to create his net when—
Leggy hopped out of the portal.
In a top hat and bright red bowtie. Smiling cheerily.
Puzzles’s arm slowly fell, first in confusion…
Then in fear.
Old villains had come out of that portal only a few moments ago. And Puzzles knew that outfit. Knew what Leggy was dressed up for. Who she was dressed up for.
“No…” Puzzles whispered, his voice soft, full of dread. He’d just made amends with WPNZ. He didn’t want to—couldn’t—face this. Not yet.
The ground rumbled again, stronger than last time. Puzzles heard Meggy gasp beside him. She, too, had discerned what they were about to face.
Then came the first hand.
From the rift came a familiar white glove marked with three black lines like a cartoon character. Crested in grey wires. And as large as Puzzles himself.
Puzzles heard the rest of the SMG4 crew react in shock and fear. Now all of them knew who they were facing.
A second, identical glove emerged from the vortex, and the hands tore open the epicentre, uncovering a very familiar face with a very familiar CRT head.
Puzzles’s grip on the Remote slackened as he watched himself emerge, until finally the thing clattered on the ground at his feet. He couldn’t move.
Cables seemed to appear from nowhere and attach themselves to Past Puzzles’s wire-crested body. His smile was wide—manic—as he looked down at the crew.
Puzzles heard a whirring behind him, and he glimpsed over to see WPNZ with his machine gun already equipped, ready to fight and defend. Before Puzzles could make a call, however, Meggy rushed up to the assassin.
“No! We don’t know if hurting him will hurt Puzzles!”
WPNZ regarded Meggy for a moment, looking between her and Puzzles’s past self. After a moment, he relented, sheathing his gun and changing back to his normal hand.
Just as Puzzles refocused on the major threat, however, his past self snapped his fingers, and the world suddenly turned a blinding white. The sound of the swirling vortex and murmuring crew faded away, replaced with dead silence.
Puzzles’s vision adjusted, and he realised he was looking down at the floor, which was no longer rock, but blue and yellow vinyl puzzle pieces.
He knew that flooring.
Puzzles quickly looked up, seeing a blue and white striped tent only a few paces away from him.
With cutouts of himself on either side of the entrance.
He looked behind him, noting a small ramp leading up to the entrance and exit, adorned in more cutouts.
He was in Puzzle Park.
Puzzles looked around, expecting the crew somewhere at his side like they were only seconds ago. But no one was there. Nor were any lights on. He was alone.
The more selfish part of him felt nostalgic at the sight of his old Park, but it was quickly stifled by his growing dread. Where was everyone? How did they end up here? Why weren’t they by his side? Did his past self relocate everyone?
“Think, Puzzles…” he told himself, now pacing. “You’re the reason you’re here now… that all of this is happening… technically… and literally in the broader sense, I suppose, but…”
Puzzles continued pacing, pinching the ends of his gloves.
“Boxhead!”
Puzzles perked up, looking back to the entrance where WPNZ and Toomp were rushing down the ramp towards him. Puzzles was relieved. He wasn’t completely alone.
WPNZ and Toomp arrived at his side. “Boxhead,” WPNZ said again, “where the hell are we?”
Right. WPNZ and Toomp had no idea what was going on. They had never been here. Unlike everyone else—wherever they were.
“Puzzle Park,” Puzzles told the assassins, looking back to the striped tent in front of him. The gateway to the rest of the park. If WPNZ was here, did that mean the others were somewhere inside? But where?
“So…’this your park? That was you comin’ outta that thing?”
“It must’ve been,” Puzzles confirmed. “Me from…the past.” He fidgeted with the ends of his gloves again.
WPNZ must’ve noticed, because he asked Puzzles, “Hey, you okay?”
The question caught Puzzles off-guard, and he had to stop himself from waving away the concern. “I—” he looked away, taking a few moments to sort through what he was thinking. “Everyone’s… gone. And I don’t know where they are, or if I’ve done anything to them, and… I think there’s already been enough damage done today as is.”
“If you’ve done—? Right, nevermind, stupid question. Look, Boxhead, if it’s your park, and past you brought us here, then where do you think you’d’ve put everyone?”
Where would he have put everyone?
Well, the lights are out, so the Park isn’t running. Everything would turn on once Mario and SMG4 were awake. If those two aren’t awake, they’d still be unconscious in the Tunnel of Fun. And everyone else would be in position for opening. So he should be going to the Tunnel.
Puzzles, much more confident with a plan in mind, stepped through the blue tent and into the Park. He could hear the clanking and squishing of WPNZ and Toomp loyally behind him. He looked around the open area, trying to find the path to the Tunnel.
“Where’re we headed exactly?” WPNZ asked.
“I know where SMG4 and Mario are,” Puzzles explained, his footsteps slow as he continued looking for the right direction. “I just have to figure out exactly where the building they’re located is.”
“Well it’s your park, shouldn’t you know it pretty well?”
“I do know it well! I just…am used to a different way of viewing it. A broader way of viewing it. Not just—” Puzzles gestured with his hand near his screen “—eye level.” Viewing a Park from camera monitors turned out to be quite different from walking around the place.
Eventually, Puzzles got his bearings and found the right path, his pace quickening as he made his way to the Tunnel. He moved past the bumper cars, through an arch adorned with three stars as WPNZ and Toomp followed.
“Geez, a little self-absorbed, are we?” WPNZ commented. Puzzles turned to see him taking in the props all over the area with a faint grin. “How long’d it take to make all this?”
“The props? A few weeks, maybe.”
“A few what? Did’ya have ‘em ready or somethin’?” WPNZ asked, surprised and clearly amused. Puzzles felt some wryness of his own, but didn’t give an answer. “What about the rides and the rest of the park?” the assassin pressed.
“The infrastructure was…already here. It’s a long story.” Puzzles wasn’t sure he was ready to regale his seizing of Didney Worl, even to WPNZ and Toomp.
“I mean, we have a little time,” WPNZ told Puzzles. He let out a laugh. “I mean—what—did ya—”
Puzzles heard a buzz to his left, and for only a brief second, Puzzles saw something firing towards WPNZ. Without thinking, Puzzles wrenched the assassin out of the way as an electric beam singed the vinyl floor where WPNZ just stood.
The pair stood in silence for a moment, Puzzles’s hand still gripped to the back of WPNZ’s jacket, both of them watching the blackened spot on the floor.
Then WPNZ let out a disbelieving laugh. “Didn’t know you had that kinda strength, Shakespeare,” he said, nudging the performer on the shoulder. But Puzzles was looking up, in the direction the beam came from.
And was face to face with a camera.
“WPNZ, the cameras, disable them,” Puzzles commanded, pointing at the one he noticed. Immediately, WPNZ obliged, shooting down not just the one Puzzles marked, but another just outside his view.
Once finished, the assassin turned to Puzzles. “Why?”
“We’re…being watched.”
“Watched? Who’s on the cameras?”
“…me,” Puzzles said soberly.
Puzzles saw WPNZ’s eyebrows furrow as he contemplated something, or perhaps recalled something, as he asked, “What happened here anyway? It landed you in jail, didn’t it? Some sorta ‘incident’?”
Puzzles winced. “I… may or may not have… mind-controlled most of the SMG4 crew and attempted to torture and kill SMG4 and Mario out of revenge.”
Both WPNZ and Toomp stared at Puzzles for a moment, but quickly, a distinctly impressed grin spread across WPNZ’s face. “Shit—no wonder that Fridge was after ya.”
Puzzles had to admit it felt strange to hear someone entertained by his past. It was a… nice feeling.
But they hardly had time for nice feelings right now! Puzzles pulled himself from WPNZ’s gaze, focusing on the path to the Tunnel.
“We shouldn’t get distracted,” he told the criminals beside him, moving once more. “And keep an eye out for cameras,” he added to WPNZ, who nodded, he and Toomp following.