Once Dead OCT Spectator Entry-Arc Inkline

Once Dead Spectator Entry: Arc Inkline

Reflections of the Past

“Doodlez…” Arc sighed as he sat outside where the pool was after a while of finally finding Barlow with Eclipse’s help and learning he already did what Veronica asked him to do. “How was I supposed to know I already tagged Mr. Barlow when I wanted my envelope opened…”

Suddenly he heard a splash as well as a board vibrating behind him and got curious. He looked inside and saw Eclipse swimming several laps wearing a sporty dark red pair of swimming trunks with black stripes on the sides instead of his usual clothes, which were on one of the chairs on the deck and the pendant was on the table beside the chair. What caught the sketch’s attention the most was a distinctive large scar on the hedgeboy’s back whenever he swam by.

A scar that looked like a three-toed footprint that covered most of his back and that got him even more curious since he never seen one before.

“It’s not nice to stare y’know,” another voice popped up and Arc jumped until he saw it was the other hedgeboy that always had a violet glow around him named New Moon that lived in the pendant unless coming out in a hologram to talk to everyone. “I guess you can’t help but notice that scar, huh?”

“Is that what that big mark called?” Arc asked innocently. “Where did he get it?”

New Moon soon shot a glare with his violet and crimson eyes that made the doodle flinch. “You don’t want to know.”

“Knock it off New Moon!” Eclipse scolded as he got out of the pool and grabbed a towel that was on his jacket. “It’s obvious he’s new to the outside world; being a living drawing and everything.”

“Well excuuuuse me Eclipse!” New Moon sarcastically replied before returning to the pendant as Eclipse started to dry himself off.

Eclipse sighed in slight frustration. “Sorry about him. He often tends to be difficult.”

“It’s O.K!” Arc replied with a smile that seemed to bring a sight grin to his new friend’s face. “But what did he mean when I asked about the scar?”

The smile soon then faded as a shadow suddenly went over Eclipse’s eyes. “That’s because…it’s a reminder…of my death…”

“Death?” Arc asked in concern.

He sighed. “Humans don’t live forever Arc, or any living creature for that matter…I know since I used to be human myself. When we die, it simply means our time on Earth is over, sometimes violently like with this tournament…but somehow I cheated on that, giving me the form I have now.”

“How’d you do that?” Arc asked and he gave another sigh.

“Why not I treat you to a drink or something while I tell you the whole story. It’s a long one and I rather talk about it over a tea since it helps calms me down. But first I need to shower and get changed. I don’t think that witch Veronica will appreciate me walking around her hotel smelling like the pool water in nothing but a swimsuit.”

That caused them both to chuckle as they went into the men’s room after Eclipse grabbed his stuff.

A while later they were sitting at the Hotel’s café with a couple of teas, with Eclipse now fully dressed.

“Um…so how did you cheat death?” Arc asked.

“I think the better question is your original one on how I got my scar since they both are connected. It happened over a year ago when I got this mission to hack into a game called DreamScape. It was a special game that allowed the users to wear a headset so they could see the game as if it was real. It’s what we call Virtual Reality.”

“Doodlez that sounds neat!” the sketch said excitedly.

“It does, doesn’t it? Sadly I didn’t get very far as I was beaten by a user named DonnytheDarkOne and was forced to log out for good. But later on I soon got a nasty feeling that something was still wrong about that game and, sure enough, I was right after a bit of investigating. It turned out the creator of the game, Para, was using it to satisfy her sick pleasures as a scientist, using the game to create harm in order to fulfill her twisted theories on whatever was going on in her mind.”

“What’s a theory?” Arc asked.

“It’s like a special guess or a question that one can get an answer for through science, which is a special way that people can learn about the world with experiments, and that’s only in simple terms since it can be complicated in a lot of ways. Unfortunately all of Para’s theories were wrong ones. And it wasn’t the first time she pulled a fatal stunt like that from what I found out later on. It seemed she also created a multi-dimensional tournament months earlier that also satisfied her twisted ideas, flinging various competitors, like us in this place, to different worlds just to fight and kill each other.”

Arc gulped at this as Eclipse took a sip of his tea before continuing.

“Anyway back to DreamScape. At the time she was about to shut down the game to try to cover her tracks, my superiors wanted some special data for a project so I got my character data before it was lost forever…but that was a costly mistake.”

“A mistake?” the drawing asked in concern as he noticed the white knuckles that Eclipse was now slowly starting to show before he took another sip.

“The project involved a special bracer I once wore on my wrist that allowed me to become my old DreamScape game character in the real world but Para seemed to anticipate a hacker like me getting the data so she installed a computer virus in it that would take control of me and turn me into a mindless killer. I didn’t know about it until my first mission to test the Digital Brace as it was called out on the field with a small group of fellow agents. There wasn’t any real goal on that mission, just to test the Brace and how it did. I suddenly blanked out, only to come to and see the damage; the bodies of the agents around me with their blood covering my own body and my Spellblade. I was…just…horrified on what happened! I-I practically panicked!”

Arc stayed silent as Eclipse tried to calm down so he wouldn’t surrender to his emotions and lash out at the drawing. He looked so scared and sad all at once, with tears threatening his eyes, and Arc couldn’t help but feel sorry for his new friend.

“D-did you get into trouble for it?” he asked nervously after Eclipse calmed down.

“I did, but I was proven innocent because a fellow hacker managed to get some security footage of the attack, much like I did when we were looking for Barlow except she recorded it for the courts to see. It showed me in a trance-like state killing them all. Ever since then, our first goal was to get rid of the virus, but it seemed Para knew what she was doing and it was impossible to delete it completely thanks to her programming skills. So I decided until I met up with her again to watch how long I stayed in my hedgeboy form to keep it from controlling me.”

“That sounds smart!”

“It was and it worked for quite a while, until I met Dr. Ollivander. He had a personal issue with that devil spawn since he and his twin brother Percival were born conjoined at the head, meaning they were born with their heads fused together, and she separated them without a way of not relieving them of any pain during the operation. Because of that, they spent their time tracking her down and recruiting anyone who was affected by her once they found the location. Which included me…and Noia.”

“The crazy guy?!” Arc exclaimed as he heard about him from many of the other guests while wandering the halls.

“Yes, him. In fact his current condition were caused by her. When we made it to the planet where she was hiding, we walked into another trap. She had monsters roaming the tunnels, and a deadly biological virus in the air.”

“A what virus?” Arc asked in confusion.

“The virus I had originally can ruin a computer, the other virus that Para released can really badly hurt or kill a human or another living creature. In this case, it messed with our minds, making us forget things and can’t tell friend from enemy among other unwanted conditions. I was also affected, sadly.”

“Then how come you’re not crazy like Noia?”

Eclipse calmly shrugged. “To be honest, I’m not sure. I can only guess that when I died and earned this form, all the effects were removed. Anyway I was going through and soon I ran into a dragon-girl named Anaphylexia, or Ana for short, who was once human until Para experimented on her. Because of the virus we ended up fighting with me becoming badly injured. But as I tried to escape through the tunnels…that’s when I met up with him.”

“W-who?” the sketch asked nervously as Eclipse’s mood grew even darker.

“Mangadour…He was a larger dragon-creature from Lord knows what other world Para hired him from, no matter what I tried to find off of her computers and…he killed me.”

Arc was silent from shock as he continued.

“It was brief…but still painful as he stomped on me like an insect. I barely got one last message through before he did and somehow my soul got trapped in the Brace…helping me cheat death.”

“Soul?”

Eclipse paused for a minute to try to figure out an easy way to explain. “It’s something that’s hard to describe but it’s basically what all living creatures have. That includes you Arc since you’re alive and sitting right here in front of me. Though there is more to it than what anybody can really find out.”

Even though he didn’t fully understand, Arc did smile as he got a bit of what Eclipse was saying. Or at least trying to say.

“I don’t remember much except waking up in a digital world looking mostly like I am now since I no longer had my old body. An old friend, that once betrayed the agency I work for due to Para, not only re-programmed the Brace to keep me from fading but also got Ollivander to send me home where I was pretty much fixed up to communicate to the outside world better and go through the digital world faster. I soon was allowed to find out about the original incident with the twin’s operation, like I mentioned earlier, and learned that she was finally captured and given her own bio-virus as a punishment for what she did.”

He both scoffed and gave a half-hearted chuckle at this last comment. “Served her right to get a taste of her own medicine if you’d ask me. It’s what a lot of us can call ‘poetic justice.’”

He shook his head for a minute and then continued. “As for the computer one, well he saw that he was only doing her dirty work and ditched her for me while my friend, Agent Solstice, was given another chance since he did try to help with stopping Para.”

“What happened to the virus after that?” Arc asked so Eclipse pointed to his pendant and it took the doodle a few minutes to figure it out as his eye went wide. “Wait…are you saying that it was really New Moon?!”

“That’s right. He was changed into a partner program for me and stuck with me since. But I can’t ever forget what happened…And the scar Mangadour left me on my back is a harsh reminder of the whole event…Which in turn, shows why I also can’t trust Veronica; I don’t know if this is all another sick game or not so I’m not taking any chances. I’ve felt betrayal too many times and sometimes it makes it hard for me to trust others too much or for too long.”

They both went silent after Eclipse finished his story. Despite still having a few more questions, Arc could see that his friend was hurting from the events but his last words seems to spark some resolve in the sketch as he firmly took his hand which caused the hedgeboy to look up and see the determination in his eye.

“Don’t worry Eclipse, you can trust me. I may not know about the world too much and I’m not sure when I’ll meet my creator, but until then I’ll try to help you out with trusting others and healing from your past!”

Both the brown eye and the violet eye went wide and he soon smiled at Arc. Despite the doodle’s naïveté, he had a good enough heart that put a grateful smile to his face as a single tear, one of joy for once, finally slipped down his cheek.

“Thank you Arc…for listening and showing I can trust you.”

Before Arc could answer, Noia came running in yelling, “TOYOTA I FINALLY GOT THAT GOTHIELLE!”

“Bloody hell you great git!” he snapped as he quickly stood up and glared at the black-haired, out-of-his-mind human. “My name is Eclipse! NOT Toyota!”

The human was so shocked at his sudden anger that he ran away screaming.

“And to think…I felt sorry for him…at first,” he commented sternly with a glance back to his friend after somewhat calming down and then looked back down the hall Noia ran through and muttered under his breath in slight frustration, “…Cor…”

All Arc could do was give a nervous chuckle as a swirly sweat-drop went down his face.

“Doodlez…”