Razderona • DNF

6 ︴breakdown

George slid his arm under his head to cushion it, allowing his eyes to flutter closed as his body basked in the sunlight.

It was only a few minutes before he felt the warmth of the previous sunlight be replaced with a small chill, a breeze nipping at his bare arm. He frowned, and then rolled over, eyes opening. The girl from before stood before him, peering down at him with those wide and curious brown eyes.

A gasp ripped through his throat and his eyes fell wide, pushing himself back until his back hit the tree.

She spoke, in a gentle— but unusually recognisable voice. "Woah, wait! I'm not trying to hurt you in any way!"

George's eyes darted around, and then fixated on 'Nysa,' a frown tugging onto his features. This was more than a sense of deja vu, this just happened, unless he had imagined it? What happened? He thought, completely confused and forgetting about the brunette in front of him.

Within seconds 'Nysa' erupted into flame, a pained shriek flooding from her throat as she dispersed into golden particles. Sapnap was revealed, standing behind the hallucination, smoke trickling skyward from his palm in light grey ribbons.

"Sapnap?" George rubbed his eyes, confused. He had already destroyed the hallucination seconds before, he was sure of it. He looked past the pyromaniac, noticing Karl, leaning weakly against Quackity as the shorter helped him over. "What happened?"

"I went back in time." Karl said, his voice weak, strained. It clearly took a lot of power from him, despite only going back a few minutes. "You had revealed yourself to everyone on the field."

"I did." It wasn't a question, George witnessed it with his own eyes. He looked back up at Karl, "I didn't know you could go back in time."

"Time travel is my power." Karl explained, Quackity setting him down beside George. "It's not a power that should be used lightly."

"And you're probably going to get in major amounts of trouble for it." Dream retorted, leaning against the conifer the four were under.

George ignored the blonde's comment, tilting his head slightly, he asked; "I don't understand, not to be rude of course, but how comes it took this much energy to go back one or two minutes?"

Karl flopped back in the grass, eyes fluttering closed. "I had to go back in time for everyone on this whole earth, not just us." He explained, a heavy breath leaving his lips. "I've trained so hard for this, eventually I'm hoping to be able to go back days, just in case something happens."

George couldn't stop his eyes from widening. "That's amazing Karl, you're so talented already."

"Not exactly, I still need way more lessons when it comes to it." Karl shook his head, sighing. "I didn't think before using my powers, if I act out of impulse again, it could really fuck up everything— playing with time is such a dangerous game, I'm changing the outcomes of so many different things already just by preventing you from outing yourself."

"You've most likely changed them to be more positive outcomes," Dream reassured, taking a seat on one of the gnarled conifer roots. "Sure Otis probably knows about George, which is a reason why he sent a hallucination, but that's better than everyone on this field knowing, news would have definitely spread fast."