Glitched

32 - A Risky Plan

"You absolute idiot!" Switch snapped. "What were you thinking?!"

Vector wasn't in the mood for his tone. His head hurt, and he groaned as he placed a paw above his eyes. Had he hit his head on something? He couldn't remember.

"Where am I?" he mumbled.

"Your room," said Switch. "The unown have been bringing berries into it by the bucket load for the past hour."

Vector ventured to open one eye. Switch was crouching as a talonflame beside five heaping plates of berries. Bucket load was clearly an over-exaggeration.

"How long have I been out?" he asked.

"Oh, I don't know." Switch rolled his eyes. "What time did you decide to jump through the freaking window?!"

"It's not like we're miles up off the ground!" Pain radiated through Vector's head again and he placed a paw back over his eyes. "Give me a break. I was doing an experiment."

"Seeing if you could bounce?"

"No! Trying to find out if I need to be conscious to erase those cracks!"

Switch's beak snapped shut and he stared at the meowstic for a moment. The silence drew Vector's eye onto him and he sighed.

"What was the result?" Vector asked.

"They were all still there," Switch told him. "A small net of them just below the window. They curved up towards the sky which was how I was able to drag you out without touching them. I was too worried to really process that you fell through them if I'm honest."

Vector clenched his teeth together as he pushed himself up. "So that answers it then."

Switch rushed to the bed and adjusted the pillow so the meowstic could lean back against the wall.

"That explains why Leaf caught it," Vector went on. "I have to be conscious, don't I?"

He found a plate of berries deposited on his lap and absently picked one from it.

"I guess so." Switch shrugged then let out a sigh. "Things just keep getting more and more complicated."

"I'd say they're getting simpler, but whatever." Vector took a huge bite from the sitrus berry and grimaced at its sour flavour. "I mean... we now understand why Leaf caught it when Pixel and the unown didn't." He looked at Switch, now crouching on the floor, out of the corner of his eye. "And we know that even if humans do eventually catch it that you won't."

Switch made a thoughtful noise and gazed at the top of the wall. "Good point."

"But it's not just being unconscious that causes it to fail," said Vector.

Switch snapped round to look at him again. "What do you mean?"

"I remember seeing those cracks above my head," Vector explained. "It's very vague, but... it seems to be if I'm in the process of passing out then it won't work."

"Oh, I don't understand that at all," said Switch. "I don't even understand why you need to be awake either, but there we go."

"Neither do I," said Vector. "And I guess we'll never know."

He finished off the sitrus berry then chose his next one carefully, selecting a maranga from beneath a heap of pecha berries. As he took a bite out of it, finding it much more pleasant, he turned his attention back to the talonflame.

"Who else knows what happened?"

"No one," said Switch. "Gyro told me you'd demanded he only tell me, so I kept it to myself. Pixel and Retro have no idea, and Gyro told the rest of the unown to keep it under their metaphorical hats." He paused. "X found that very amusing. I think he might be stringing it into a new pun."