Chapter Text
One moment, Chonny is sitting at his keyboard in his house/apartment, ready to play with Tally Hall's "Time Machine."
The next, he's sitting at his piano in… some kind of fuzzy, grey void.
The grey static seems to extend in all directions. Chonny stands, trying to get his bearings, then looks at his keyboard and bench. They both seem perfectly normal. The ground beneath them, beneath him, is also made of the grey, but it's solid; he isn't falling through it. It tickles slightly. Making sure he's got his back directly to his keyboard, Chonny walks forward through the emptiness.
Nothing changes. It's just… grey forever in every direction. "What the hell?"
A good five minutes of walking later, Chonny spots his keyboard in the distance, facing him the same way he walked away from it. It's not alone, though; there's someone inspecting it. He hurries his pace before they can break his only piece of familiarity in this strange place.
"Hey!" he shouts as he nears the stranger and his keyboard. "What the hell are you doing?"
Whoever-the-hell looks up at him, unimpressed despite their… strange… appearance. Half of their face and clothes are pitch-black and the other half are a kind of mind-numbing white. It doesn't seem to be facepaint, more like they're wearing a mask. The only constant between the halves of the mask is a red-painted smile. Well, it seems like it's supposed to be a smile, but it looks an awful lot like a frown. Their hair is a frizzy-curly brown that mirrors Chonny's own.
"Who the fuck are you?" the stranger asks in return, voice like the recorded feedback of Chonny's. "How the fuck did you get here?" There's almost a defensive tone to their voice, like Chonny has invaded somewhere deeply private and secret. The static grey of the void seems to fuzz with their words.
"Uhm," Chonny says, not knowing how to answer the questions. Well, at least he knows who he is. "My name's Chonny Jash." He sticks out a hand, just to be polite. The stranger is acting like he's the intruder in their space, after all. "I've no idea what I'm doing here, or what here is."
They don't accept his offered hand. "Call me Soul. Or Atlas, I don't care," they say, the static still boiling with their nerves. The mask gives away nothing. "But you're in my mindscape."
Yeah, okay, that makes perfect nonsense. "I. What?"
"How did you get here?" Soul asks again.
"…I literally just appeared here with my keyboard." Soul glances at it again and steps away. He doesn't seem to mean either Chonny or the keyboard any harm, though considering they're both intruding on his mindscape, whatever that is…
"You shouldn't be here."
"I think we've established that, yeah?"
Soul gives an exaggerated sigh, the static bending like grass in the wind. "What do you two think?"
Chonny is about to argue that they're alone when, suddenly, they're not.
To either side of Soul stands an almost-identical pair of twins. Neither of them wears a mask, though one wears a black blindfold, and they both bear a bizarre resemblance to both Soul and Chonny. The one to the left of Soul wears all black, uncanny blue eyes judgemental, azure lips in a scowl. The other wears all white and a deep purple frown, arms folded across his chest. None of them seem happy to see him.
"Aren't we about to begin?" the blindfolded one asks, the void turning black when he speaks.
"Less than two minutes remain until curtain call." The void responds in blinding white when the blue one talks. "And a stranger's here?" Though his voice is flat, mechanical and almost emotionless, disdain comes through clearly. It's also deeper, though not naturally, sounding like it's been pitch-modified.
It comes as a dull surprise that they both also sound like Chonny. He's acclimating far too fast to this absolutely bizarre trio.
The blindfolded one turns his face to Soul, frown contorted in consternation. "Are you certain we haven't split into four this time?"
"Negative," his twin responds. "He is not one of us."
"And how would you know?" Purple asks.
"Because that is my job," Blue retorts, more disdain in his voice. "But it's not like you'd know much about doing a job, would you?"
Atlas physically pushes them apart. "Mind," he says, head tilted toward Blue. "And Heart." He indicates Purple. "Or Apollo and Artemis, if you will."
Oh. Greek mythology. Fascinating. "So sun, moon, Titan holding Earth," Chonny says, pointing to Mind, Heart, and then Soul. "Radical. Got it." He doesn't get it at all whatsoever. "And you're… triplets?"
"We're supposed to be the same person." Soul glances to the other two, who are still glaring at each other. Well, Mind is glaring at Heart and Heart looks like he's glaring back from behind the blindfold. "However, these two can't seem to fucking agree who we really are."
"He's a fucking robot," Heart says exactly as Mind says, "he's a fucking weeping infant." The void fights between black and white as they each speak. Chonny thinks he might have a seizure.
"You mean I'm a crybaby?"
"No, because you barely possess the faculties of doing anything other than flailing and crying."
"SHUT. UP." Soul's voice comes through clear and dominating, silencing the other two. Is this how things usually are here? Chonny doesn't think he'd last more than ten minutes with the way Mind and Heart argue. "Curtains. Everybody in place." Heart and Mind both… disappear, or return to wherever they were before they showed up, or whatever.
There's a strong compulsion pulling Chonny to his keyboard. He obeys it, hands floating over the keys, waiting for an imperceptible curtain to rise.
"Welcome to Tally Hall," says Soul, and then the show begins.