Chapter Text
“You’ve threatened me before, but you.. don’t have the guts!”
CRRKK!- WHOOooshHH-
Chives lay kneeled on the ground, his hands covering his smile of pure shock and disbelief. His charcuterie board of mini sandwiches and various luxury meats was left abandoned beside him. Pepper–err–Madam Grey had just killed Madam White. The two ladies had been arguing for the past few minutes. Punches and insults were thrown around, causing the two glass based objects to shatter and crack. The boiling point of the argument was when Madam Grey delivered a hit directly into Madam White’s face, causing her to launch backwards and drift into the darkness of the nearby Blackhole’s abyss. Silence spread throughout the area, at least.. for a few seconds.
“Y-You all saw! I tried to save her! But she had to go!”
Madam Grey exclaimed, gasping for air in rage as she turned towards the flavorless contestants of Inanimate Insanity Infinity.
The shells of the soul lacking contestants stared back. Nothing. Absolutely nothing for exactly one second until Haybale yelled out spontaneously in joy.
“OH, I CAN JUST WEEP FOREVA-!”
Cheers erupted all around. Test Tube and Lightbulb stood in complete and total astonishment as all the quirky objects around jumped and whooped, the exact same way they had just a couple minutes ago when receiving the news of Test Tube’s elimination from a game she wasn’t even in.
“Oh… my golly jee.”
Test Tube spoke from her duct taped position up on the metal pole, the same one where her death, (or re-entering into this world), was in the process of being held. She shook her head, clearing her thoughts before looking back down at Lightbulb and shouting in urgency.
“We need to go, quick! Let’s fix this!”
Lightbulb ripped the tape off Test Tube in one go, freeing the latter from her tangled up prison of grey, sticky restraints.
“Oh this?”
Lightbulb snatched the time-traveling calculator from the nerdy girl's hands, looking down at it with a puzzled look of bewilderment and curiosity. She'd messed with it before, earlier that day actually. Lightbulb held out her hand carefully towards the mechanism. Her hand softly glowed with the crackles from the electricity flowing from within her.
“No, not again!”
Test Tube exclaimed as Lightbulb touched it, the numbers on the machine’s screen glitching and moving around before it landed on the words RE-ROUTING with a hourglass at the end.
Chives watched from his position down on the ground, his eyes shimmering in curiosity as his smile turned into a neutral line of interest. His whole life had been used to serve the two fashionitas, or better known as the self proclaimed BCFFS, (atleast.. former BCFFS), it was all he’d ever known. He never got to see the world beyond being a servant of this fashion show. To see beyond this colorful grass and sky, to see beyond this reality. He wanted to explore. To live out his dreams. Or.. whatever his dreams could possibly grow to be if he was free.
‘What if? What if? What if?’
The words echoed through his head as he stared at the two foreign objects ahead of him. The mysterious lightbulb and that vile green vial. He’d seen them appear from what seemed to be thin air through that device earlier. Where had they come from? Were they from.. A different world? If they could travel time itself, why couldn’t he have a go at it too? Maybe if he asked nicely enough, they’d let him tag along. Chives longed for a place to finally discover who he could truly be without the stress of the two Madams in his way.
“Wait!”
He shouted out, lunging towards the two. Neither seemed to notice him or his cries, maybe it was due to his small statue. At the very last moment, he managed to grab hold of Lightbulb’s leg. He held on tight, hoping they’d be observant enough to detect him before it was too late. However, what he wasn’t expecting was the sudden burst of light throughout his eyes and all around him. One moment was the magenta grass he’d known all his existence, the next? A dull, pixelated looking green served as the ground.
The dull grass had a few blades sticking up, but only in patterns. They would litter the ground in groups of three, showing up as perfect straight or diagonal lines which were a shade of green way darker than the rest. The sky was a very light blue, so light it almost looked white. There didn’t seem to be any clouds in the sky, but there was also no shining sun to uplift all of those around. The whole world looked flat and… half-assed, in a way. Not flat like an old 2D game, but everything seemed to be lacking rendering and further dimension. There were no shadows put in place, no specific horizon line between the sky and ground, just hills of this disappointing green and the strange grass that came along with it. This new place definitely was not as good looking as Chives’ old home, but.. It was a start to his explorations of trying something new.
Test Tube looked around in surprise, she obviously had not been expecting the save from Lightbulb back there.
“Well I’ll be. Maybe.. Maybe there is a method to your madness.”
Test Tube smiled at Lightbulb, the heartwarming moment lasting for a few seconds before someone cleared their throat nervously. Test Tube jumped back in surprise, eyes widening a bit in shock and fear at the unexpected noise coming from Lightbulb’s legs. Were talking legs a thing now? Oh gosh.. They must’ve messed up badly this time. This was worse than breaking that stick!
“Uhm.. hello.. Madams.”
“WHU- UH- GUH-”
Test Tube stammered, looking down at the reality hopping herb below her. Her confusion quickly turned to anger as she adjusted her glasses and leaned in closer to Chives. Green ooze seeped out of her cracks from earlier quarrels. Bubbles rose from inside her liquid as it seemed to boil in rage.
“WHAT. WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE??”
She pointed a finger towards him, her demeanor from before completely shifting at the reality threatening occurrence which had just gone down in front of her two, very own eyes.
“Do you COMPREHEND how many universal- or-or, dimensional, parallels you could've just created?! We can’t just take someone from their reality and bring them to ours! This is a terrible idea, just absolute taradiddle, why would you-”
Test Tube’s rambles were cut off by Lightbulb waving her hand with a raised eyebrow and a look of interest on her face. Test Tube sighed before turning to look at Lightbulb, raising her eyebrow in a silent way of saying ‘go on?’. Lightbulb however, in all her glory, did not seem to get the hint. Test Tube stared for a few more seconds, tapping her foot before finally speaking up again with an exasperated expression and a sense of fed-upness in her voice.
“Yes, Lightbulb?”
“Didn’t we go into his world first? Also, shouldn’t we be more focused on trying to fix the whole switcheroo situation of our reality first, Tubes?”
Test Tube grumbled in annoyance, turning away. She stood there for a moment as she thought to herself about how to go about this situation. What was she supposed to do with this guy? She didn't even know his name, no shot she could figure out a logical way to get him back and fix her own time problem. Atleast, not without creating two different versions of him or herself, which would open a whole ‘nother can of worms with doppelgängers and alternative realities. She could just kill the guy, but that’d be morally wrong. UGH! Why did time travel have to be so challenging? But then again, that’s what makes it interesting. All the thematic parallels.. She was getting off track. She turned back to face the two again with a sigh, shoulders loosening up from their previously tense position. The bubbles in her mysteriously green insides seemed to subside as she spoke.
“I suppose you’d be right, Lightbulb. We should probably work on fixing our time problems first before deciding what to do with him. But, I don’t want him getting any ideas. Cover his eyes somehow, I don’t trust this guy..”
Test Tube looked down at Chives begrudgingly, crossing her arms while giving a glare sharp enough to cut him into a perfect pasta garnish.
Chives swallowed hard.
Lightbulb, looked between the two with a confused look. What was not to trust about this guy? He seemed harmless. But, whatever Test Tube says, goes, so she leaned down to his height. She put her hands up in a picture frame expression over her right eye as she scoped out the little guy. How could she cover his eyes..?
At first, she tried to stick the leaves of Chives’ body down onto his own face to cover his eyes. It didn’t work, they stuck right back up.
Chives stood there awkwardly, not knowing how to respond to the sudden touch or attempted taking of his sight.
“I don’t think that's going to work, Miss..”
He spoke up quietly, raising his hand up in a pointing gesture but with his finger curling down, failing to reach the skies.
Test Tube watched the interaction, rolling her eyes and face palming before adding in her two cents once again.
“No- Lightbulb.. Here-”
Test Tube picked up the herb and threw him into a nearby low-quality bush. A quiet ‘ow’ and a pained groan came in protest from the victim.
“See! Problem solved. Now c’mon, help me figure out how to fix this.”
Chives sat silently in the prison of leaves and sticks for the next few minutes, trying not to get poked or stabbed from all the sharp branches surrounding him. He was able to hear a bit of what was happening from his position in the bush. Something about a ‘venomous bactrist hyperbolica’ with a few ‘golly’s thrown in.
It ended when Chives could hear a relieved sigh come from that pesky green girl, and he was suddenly taken from the bushes and lifted back up onto the disgusting green grass.
“So, what now?”
Lightbulb asked, looking between the two green-ish objects.
“Can we just time-trip-travel back to this guy’s reality?”
“No Lightbulb, you snollygoster,”
Test Tube replied, adjusting her glasses once again.
“We just altered the past for the second time today, and the way it’s changed now will bring us back to our timeline. Even if we go back and change it again, there's no guarantee that it’ll be the exact same way it was before. Plus, there's the chance we’ll run into our past selves. AGAIN.”
“I dunno Testy, that sounds preeettyyy sick…”
“Well, LightBULB. It won’t be all quirkidy-doo when there's three of us and two of.. What’s your name again?”
Test Tube turned towards Chives, an actual look of curiosity towards the man showing in her eyes for once. She raised an eyebrow expectantly, hoping for an answer sometime within the next millenia.
Chives looked right back in response, taking a moment to clear his throat before leaning forward in a half-bowing motion.
“Chives, Madam. My name is Chives.”
She took a moment to process the information before nodding slightly and turning back to Lightbulb, continuing her rant.
“Yes, when there’s three of us and two of Chives here.”
“Alright, well,”
Lightbulb started,
“If we were able to survive perfectly fine in his weird realm-world-reality-thingie, we could probably take him back to ours! I’m sure he’d fit in with the rest of the contestants in Inanimate Insanity.”
Test Tube listens to Lightbulb’s solution for a bit before turning away and starting to mutter to herself about ‘time-traveling parallels’ and how just ‘one wrong move could break the space-time continuum itself’, whatever that means. While she calculated everything in her head, Lightbulb walked over and gently freed the calculator from Test Tube's grasp. She turned it over carefully in her hand before grabbing onto Chives and leaning against Test Tube. She typed in the numbers that Testy had been muttering under her breath, being careful not to slip up or mess up the sensitive mechanism with the electricity in her hands. She pressed enter, another flash of light appeared as the world around them changed once again.
Chives’ eyes widened.
This could be his chance for a new life.