Broken Hourglass (Sanscest Multiship)

Chapter 2 - Deja Vu

Geno couldn't remember their past. Who they were before now was a mystery. Not that they cared much.

It was like being asleep for a long time, and suddenly being snapped awake with no idea how much time had passed. The ever present ticking of the clock counted down the seconds until tick...tick..tick...BANG

Geno shot up out of bed. The mangled half of their face burned under the bandages. Their chest felt tight and breathing became difficult. The bandages needed to come off. They needed to come off now. Desperately clawing at the offending fabric, Geno's vision started to go wonky.

There was a tearing before the terrible thing was off and blood dripped onto the floor. They tried to take a deep breath, but it came out as nearly choking on air as they took too big of a breath. Hesitantly, they put their hand to their face, feeling where sections of bone were missing and leaking blood began stain their fingers.

Even after weeks passed it never seemed to stop, and Geno began to doubt that it ever would.
-
12 time portals snapped shut as the 11 unwilling participants lay on the floor, injured from hitting the ground unexpectedly and disoriented from their sudden travels.

It was a standard intake room, the size of a large classroom, a blackboard at the back, a single door at the front, no windows, and moderately lit as to not hurt anyone's eyes.

Geno, who stood on their own feet scoffed. "Newbies, it's like you've never been through a time portal before." They extended a hand to one of the skeletons on the ground, this one wearing a ratty faded blue hoodie, shorts, and a stained undershirt.

The stranger takes it and stands up due to the help before introducing himself. "I'm Dust. He/Him"

"Geno, They/Them"

Dust reached into an inner pocket of his hoodie, retrieving a lighter and a couple of joints. He held it out to Geno who accepted the offering.

It felt familiar, like something they'd done before, sometime that felt like a lifetime ago. They stood smoking in silence for a minute before Dust asked the burning question that everyone had upon meeting Geno for the first time. "So, what happened to your face?"

As everyone before, he was referring to the heavy bandages that covered half of the others face, luckily, they'd gotten pretty good at answering the question. "You should see the other guy."

They both chuckled.

"Is now really the time to be burning herbs?" It was a very pointed question. The asker was short, but had good posture, which ever so slightly moved him towards intimidating; clearly used to being respected. His most prominent feature were his gold eyes, and his head was adorned with a simple circlet.

Dust looked at the intruder and answered simply. "If I'm gonna die, I'm not gonna do it sober."

"You are so strange." The stranger said. He was quickly shut up by another stranger.

This one had unique black bones with two distinctly colored eyes, one yellow, one red. "It's pretty common where I come from. I'm Error by the way. Xe/Xem. And you are?"

Error was certainly interesting, with xyr worn clothing and strange blue marks that ran down from xyr eyes. Xe had definitely seen some interesting things.

"Dream." Geno could tell that he was from the past. Those from the future tended to introduce themselves by name and pronouns. Those from the past tended to only introduce themselves by name. Just different expectations they supposed.

Error made a hand motion for Dream to continue, but he didn't understand. Clearly Xe was not versed in time travel. A bit annoying considering the circumstances, but workable.