#thinking about him returning to pocket circuit as like. one remaining joy and piece of normalcy after all this

[skrunksthatwunk]

THEYRE GONNA HAVE POCKET CIRCUIT IN GAIDEN!!!!!!

[pi-cat000]

MSA time travel idea (part 33)

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Vivi POV, 8, 9, 10, Lewis POV, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, Lance POV 18, 19, Lewis POV 2, 21 , 22, Vivi POV 2, 24, 25  Lewis POV 3,  Mystery POV , Vivi POV 3, 29, Lewis POV 4, 31, ViVi POV 4 

Part 34: here

..

Arthur does his best to squirm and press up against his darkness which pins him in place, trying to reclaim some ounce of control.  Something. Anything!

He doesn’t know why he bothers when the result is always the same. Failure. Just like every other time he’s tried to stop the demon from doing something horrific. Like with his Uncle and Darrel, the demon will kill Lewis’s entire family and he'll be forced to watch. Lewis will come home and find them all dead, and it’ll be Arthur’s fault for thinking he could fix things. Arthur claws at the foreign entity, trying to find a crack, a weakness, anything to exploit. There’s nothing. 

He can’t just give up…not yet. 

‘NOT YET.’ He inadvertently shouts the last line.

“Oh, give it a rest already.” The rebuke is causal and relaxed. Arthur can feel the demon’s idle amusement as it watches him flail about.

‘STOP!’ 

 The internal yelling urns him an eye roll.

“What do you think you’re going to accomplish by repeating that? It didn’t work the first dozen or so times. You’re embarrassing yourself,” The demon laughs, leaning back so it is resting against the doors of the open van. Peeking over the horizon is the outline of Pepper Paradiso. With lit windows, the building is silhouetted against the darkened desert. Parked about twenty meters down and partly in a ditch, they are just far enough away that no one will notice the van unless specifically searching for it. The demon’s been staring at the building in guiltless anticipation, legs swinging back and forth, as it waits for sundown. To the left on the motorway, a motorcycle whizzes by, creating a spot of bright light which quickly disappears into the night. Simultaneously, lightning flashes somewhere out of view, briefly illuminating their surroundings.

‘STOP. Just stop!’

“Hey. Don’t make me come back there,” The demon threatens, attention moving to focus on Arthur’s pocket knife. An attempt at flipping it open fails when it jams, gummed shut with blood. Mentally, Arthur winces at the foreign sense of disappointment directed at the object responsible for killing his Uncle. A few seconds are spent struggling with the hinge.  

Finally, the demon gives up on opening it, tossing it aside and admitting, “I guess I am due for an upgrade.” It shuffles around, turning to rifle through the piles of road trip paraphernalia, targeting Lewis’s cooking supplies.

“Now where is it? I know Lew packed it. Well, you know he packed it.”

Arthur falls back for a moment, attempting to regain some strength. All this struggling and yelling is wearing him out, stretching him thin like an elastic band about to snap. Dread and profound defeat vie for dominance. If...no...When he fails to stop this, there is no going back. This is irredeemable.

 Who was he kidding, what he’s done already is irredeemable.

“HA! Got it,” The demon pulls out a box of cooking utensils, dumping them out onto the floor. They clatter around, muffled in the stale night air. Lightning flashes again, reminding Arthur of the storm rolling in from across the desert.

“Now this is a knife.” 

One of Lewis’s slicing knives is held up with no small amount of glee. Arthur watches their green eyes reflect in the polished and sharpened surface. Horror freezes him in place as his nightmare of a life grows steadily worse. 

'This is a nightmare.’ 

“I know. Great, isn't it?!” The demon responds, noting his fixation on the knife, “Once we really get out on the road there’ll be no end to potential misery. Heck, the time travel factor alone is bound to cause a whole load of interesting ripples.”

They twirl the knife between their fingers, gesturing happily at the landscape around them. The unapologetic joy is like a slap to the face, snapping his attention away from the knife.  Arthur resumes his mental clawing, twisting.

 ‘But what’s the point in that! WHAT’S THE POINT!’ 

 “HAHA. Surely you’ve figured it out by now…”  Laughter bubbles their chest. 

 “There is no point!”

 Manic chuckling catches in Arthur’s throat, shaking their entire body. It goes on for several long seconds before the demon takes a deep breath and Arthur smells the humid air, metallic with static. They hold for a count, breathing out in a long satisfied exhale, calming. It is a familiar breathing technique, though it’s not being used for much other than a display of body control. Along the motorway, a truck passes, flashing quickly by.

The demon continues talking, pushing itself upright and away from the van with renewed composure, “Millennia I've waited, wasting away, and now I have this fantastic opportunity to really screw things up. So sit back, relax, enjoy the show...”

Lightning zig-zags its way across the sky, outlining the Pepper diner, which almost seems to stretch into the distance. Arthur is getting really sick of this sensation of mental panic, which is now his go-to reaction to the demon's taunting. 

“...because I'm going to run this for all its worth. The first order of business? Killing our Lewis’s family.”

 All his thoughts are tying themselves in knots, folding in on themselves, becoming unreadable and messy. One part of him is watching and feeling his body move and the other is tangling itself up into a ball.

The doors to the van are closed with the demon’s usual flourish.

 They stroll across the dessert, circling to approach from the side opposite the diner’s car park, away from the wide front windows. In the car park is a foreign truck, with the Pepper family vehicles all parked around the opposite side. So the whole family is home and maybe one late-night customer, because why not add another person to the kill list.

 Silently, the demon ducks around the corner, attention focused on the external power-box, containing the building's circuit breakers. Arthur’s intimately familiar with it, having repaired and replaced several parts of it over the last few years.  With the lightning storm closing in, the first place Lewis’s parents would check in a power outage would be the circuit breakers. Between Arthur and the customer parking, is the employee entrance. The quickest way to the power-box is through the employee entrance. Arthur churns in distress. The demon is setting Lewis's parents up for an ambush.

Any renewed attempts at fighting remain unsuccessful. Casually, with an air of distinct confidence, the cover to the metal box is jimmied off with the knife. The demon flips the main breaker and it makes a loud thunk sound. All the surrounding light vanishes and darkness descends, made intense by the clouded sky.

However, as they turn to duck behind the building and await whoever is unfortunate enough to come through first, lightning bursts across the sky. For a split second, everything is awash with light, brightening, revealing the surrounding area. Arthur gets that phantom sensation of his stomach dropping right out from under him. There,  across from them, standing only a few meters away near the truck, is Vivi.

Unnervingly, Arthur feels is own surprise and shock echoed back at him as both his and the demon’s emotional responses sync up. What is Vivi doing here! She’s not supposed to be here! How! Had she seen them? She must have because she’d been looking right at them.  

A light blinks on, shining in their direction. Vivi is holding up her phone, attempting to see. The pinprick of light washes out her features so she is a blurry grey outline on an otherwise black background. She takes a hesitant step forward and Arthur hears a low rumble. He almost mistakes the sound as thunder due to how it vibrates the air molecules around them. A second later and he realises that the threatening noise is coming from Mystery. The dog is standing a foot ahead of Vivi, backlit by her phone. Glowing red eyes are fixed on Arthur, having no trouble seeing in the dark. It is refreshing to feel the demon’s apprehension roll through their shared mental space. Mystery will protect Vivi. His relief feels like taking a gulp fresh air after breathing in smoke.

 “Arthur?”   

Vivi is walking and the demon manoeuvres back an inch, into the lee of the building. Arthur feels the muscles in his legs tense, preparing to run. Yes. Run. They should definitely run! Runaway from Vivi and Lewis. Runaway and never return.  He hopes Mystery hunts them through the desert and rips them both to pieces. The grip on Lewis’s knife tightens, eyes tracking Vivi then darting to Mystery, calculating the distance between the two.

 They don’t run… 

“Hey!” The demon’s greeting is jarring, and Arthur wants to scream again.

 “Vivi you’re here? I…I…didn't think you’d be back till tomorrow?” Gone is the contempt and snark to be replaced with a nervous stutter. An almost perfect replica of his voice. Did he really sound that pathetic? 

“Of course I’m here,” Vivi pauses, sounding very confused, “…you left so suddenly? We were really worried.”

The demon plasters on an apologetic, slightly guilty, expression, “Yeah about that…I’m sorry. Like really sorry. I…I panicked. Between Lewis and my Uncle, I just really needed to be alone and deal with things privately.”

 A pause for dramatic effect. “You got my note right?”

 “Yeah. We were at the hospital looking for you,” Vivi says, hesitant, unsure like she’s trying to figure something out. Slowly, she inches forward, holding her phone and the light up a little higher. Mystery grows again, and Vivi stops.

 “Are you okay?” She asks, peering at him. “We’ve been trying to call you all day.”

Arthur feels himself wince in a display of guilt. Behind his back, the grip on the knife shifts and his muscles twitch. Impatient irritation resonances about their mind and Arthur does not doubt that, had Mystery not been there, they would have lunged at Vivi. 

“I didn’t know what else to do…”

They back up a bit more, further into the shadow, putting the employee entrance between Vivi and himself.

 “Hey, it's okay. We’ll work it out. We’re here for you, you know. And you can tell us anything. If you need to.” 

No. Arthur’s heart flutters. It’s far too late for that. None of this is okay. A profound sense of longing catches in his chest, drowning out the demon’s irritation.

 “Sure…” The demon mutters, distracted, glancing towards the corner of the building for potential escape routes. The van isn’t that far away, but it is still too long a stretch for the demon to run for with Mystery right there. The best chance it had would be to circle the building, break in and take a hostage. Whether or not that’s the plan, Arthur never finds out. The handle on the door jiggles, catching all of their attentions.

 Lewis steps out.

 He is holding a flashlight at the ready, turned towards the car park, probably looking for Vivi. Lewis doesn’t see Arthur lunge forward, or the knife flick out. There is a flash of silver reflected in the dim light of Vivi’s phone.

Vivi inhales sharply.

 The torch drops from Lewis’s hand, skittering across the concrete, landing so the beam faces towards them, spotlighting and casting two long shadows on the diner wall. Any sense of relief and hope shatter and Arthur finds himself cold again.

‘NO!’

“Heya Lewis. You always did have the worst luck.”

 “Arthur?” Lewis starts talking, then grunts in pain. The demon has the knife partially buried into Lewis’s side and is pushing forward in a deliberately threatening motion. 

 “I wouldn’t move if I were you. If you think this hurts, then you’ll want to avoid giving me a reason to push. One flick of the wrist and I can easily puncture a lung or sever your spinal cord.”

Lewis freezes, turning only his head and neck, attempting to see over his shoulder, “Wh..at?”

 A glare is cast toward Mystery, who is attempting to edge closer, “That includes you mutt, one more step and he’s dead.”

Mystery’s growl deepens and Arthur can feel it reverberating in his chest, through the ground, and in the air.  All around them a new pressure builds that has nothing to do with the storm closing in.  There is another flash of lightning.

 “Lewis!” Vivi tries to run forward but is suddenly blocked by Mystery who leaps between them. Arthur can see her mind whirring, processing the scene, scanning Mystery and looking to him.  Vivi’s eyes narrow, becoming determined. Lit by the stronger flashlight beam, Arthur knows both Vivi and Lewis can see how his unnaturally green eyes spark. 

 “You’re not Arthur,” Vivi accuses, pointing, “Body snatcher.”

 The surprise felt by the demon upon this sudden accusation is mirrored by Arthur. To guess possession right off the bat is a huge leap of logic. At least she doesn’t think Arthur is doing this of his own free will. He never wanted to hurt anyone.  He had just wanted things to be better than they had been.

 Vivi hisses, “Let Arthur go.”

 No longer concerned with keeping up a charade, the demon smirks, “Honestly, I prefer demon. ‘Snatcher’ is such a crude term. I don’t snatch, I appropriate. Congratulations on figuring it out, you're the first human to do so in a while.” 

“Get out of Arthur!”

 A scoff, “Oh, yes, of course, let me get right on that. What do I look like, an idiot?”

 Next to him,  Arthur can see Lewis's profile. His friend's eyes are wide with shock.

 ‘I’m sorry.’  His apology doesn’t make it very far, hitting the mental barrier separating himself from his body.

. 

Note: Yup...it’s a cliffhanger... people like those right?

Part 34: here