shell yeah!

~~~~~~~~~~

Darkness. A faint and low rumbling sound can be heard. After a few seconds, a white circle outline is drawn, with a low clock tick sound. After a few more seconds, the circle changes to a triangle, followed by another tick sound. Then a square, then back to a circle again. This loops over and over as it gets faster and faster. After a few seconds of this, a smaller circle starts orbiting around the shifting shapes in the center. Then, a white heart is drawn off to the side in a random spot. Then, a smaller triangle starts orbiting around the center. Then, a square. The speed of the center shapes shifting and the shapes around it orbiting get faster and faster and more intense, with more hearts appearing all over the screen in black and white as the orbiting and shifting begin to become very rough and chaotic. The shifting and orbiting and hearts keep getting more and more intense as the screen begins to shake and produce glitchy effects until eventually…

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP!!

The date was December 2nd, 2015. Ball, an outgoing and adventurous botanist with an obsession with the outdoors and plants, is seen sleeping in his bed. His alarm clock starts ringing loudly, waking him up. Ball annoyingly turns it off, gets up, and starts getting ready. Ready for what? To see his family of course! Christmas is this month, which means Ball’s family has their classic reunion, just like every other December.

The day went on, and it was as lovely as any other day. It was magnificent, nothing but him and his family just being together and having fun. Ball walks home, happy as he could be. When he gets home, he boots up his computer and decides to catch up on some BFDI. He’s been a long time fan of the series, and now that BFDI’s second season, BFDIA, is about to end, he’s more excited than ever. BFDIA 23 just released today, so Ball excitedly cooks up some popcorn to watch it. However, this episode did not turn out how he expected at all. Ball watches the entire hour-long episode until the very end. Ball’s jaw drops at the result. He can’t believe it. He yells angrily at what happened, annoyed about it. He then starts complaining and going on a rant loudly and pacing around his house as he progressively gets himself angrier and angrier. Eventually, his anger issues almost completely overpower him, as he nearly punched his monitor.

Ball manages to just barely hold himself back, and steps away from his desk, breathing angrily through his teeth. Ball annoyingly taps his foot as he looks around, containing his rage. He notices his comically large backpack sitting in a corner, and gets an idea. He will go on a walk! That always calms him down! There’s this one spot Ball loves to go to. It’s nice and high up on a hill, with trees all around, and it gives a perfect view of the sun setting through Mt. Cordis, a huge mountain that resembles a broken heart. And so, that’s what Ball did. Ball walked up to the very top of the hill, and sat up against a tree as he watched the sun slowly set through the giant chasm of Mt. Cordis. As Ball watches the sunset, he starts thinking about his life. Sure he may be angry right now, but at the end of the day he’s gotten so lucky. He’s gotten everything he could ever ask for. He has a stable job, a loving family, and a very fascinating hobby that never gets old. He takes a deep breath as the anger and annoyance starts to fade away. After several more minutes of staring at the mountains, he finally decides to get up and go home since it’s getting dark.

But just as he starts walking, he notices something. Something very peculiar, nothing like he’s ever seen before. It was a flower, but not any ordinary flower. It was completely lacking any colour, and… twitching? Its petals were black and filled with holes, and its stem was impossible thin. But most strange of all, it seemed to have an eye in the center of it. An eye that stared back at Ball. He froze. He saw the flower, and his face lit up brighter than a sunny summer day. He immediately took out his journal and pencil from his comically large backpack as he rushed over to the flower, got down to the ground, and started scribbling in his journal. With a huge toothy smile on his face, Ball’s mind started racing. He was wondering about how something like this even exists, what would happen if he showed it to scientists, and so on. This flower could make him famous! It could completely revolutionise what we know about plants! He could retire young!

But alas, this was not what he had in mind at all. Little did he know that this little flower would ruin everything. This little flower was actually a Corruption; a piece of a certain mysterious dimension that somehow managed to escape its bond and leak into the real world. The results of coming in contact with one could be catastrophic. Ball, with his curious and eager botanist mind, decided to touch the flower. He slowly moved his finger closer to it, until… He did it. Almost immediately after touching it, reality starts tearing apart. Everything around him starts glitching out like some kind of broken computer monitor, screeching deafeningly loud. Ball panics, stumbles, and tries to cover himself for protection.

But it was too late.

He has been transported to another realm. A colourless, nonsensical, eerily familiar realm: Aeon.

Ball gets up. He looks around, befuddled. It looks like he is just right where he was but… everything was grayscale? Ball starts wandering around, trying to get home. Ball feels an uneasy feeling, like he’s being watched, even though… nobody’s around? Ball calls out, but nobody responds. Everything is completely silent, it’s extremely unnerving. Somehow, everyone is gone. Ball starts to feel uneasy. He walks to his mom’s now monochrome house and knocks on the door. Nobody responds. He then opens the weirdly already unlocked door himself. No one. Ball’s breath starts to get heavier. He madly searches every building he comes across only to find them all completely ghosted. Eyes on plants and graffiti and billboards gawk at him as he searches more and more as gets more and more desperate. Eventually he falls into his knees and begins to sob into his hands as he realises that somehow, someway, everyone he loves is gone. He is all alone.

Over the course of the next 6 years, Ball aimlessly wanders Aeon, taking notes and documenting everything he notices about this new strange, empty place. It’s not like there was anything else he could’ve done. But as time goes on, Ball slowly starts to lose himself. Ball starts to get more desperate to leave. More desperate to go back to his normal life. His notes and documents start to get more erratic to match his sanity.

Fast forward 6 years, now September 14th 2021, Ball is seen walking up to his usual resting spot, or at least where it would be in Aeon. He leans back on the tree as he stares off at the sun—oh, there is no sun in Aeon. He leans back on the tree as he stares off at Mt. Cordis. Ball’s ears start to ring and his vision starts to blur as everything starts to go dark. He spirals into insanity as he edges closer and closer. His breathing gets heavier and heavier as he tries to stand up and turn around. But just before his eyes shut…

He sees it.

That flower. The glitched flower that started all this. This flower was inverted however; instead of being colourless and dreadful it was colourful and natural. Ball has been up at this spot in Aeon countless times during his time here, but this flower never showed up until now. Either way it didn’t matter to Ball. In his dishevelled state, Ball’s heart drops to the ground when he sees it. His eyes and mouth open wide in desperation as he lunges towards the flower. Ball crawls towards the flower and touches it. Right on cue, everything starts to tear apart just like last time. Ball can’t believe it, he starts to pant and tear up as he starts yelling and cheering. After 6 years of being trapped in Aeon he’s finally going to leave!!…

But no.

This time, the Corruption didn’t transport him across dimensions. Instead, it teleported him somewhere else in Aeon. Where? Exactly 1 kilometer above the Icosahearth. The Icosahearth is the heart of Aeon, placed directly in the center of it amongst a sea of nothingness. The Icosahearth takes the shape of an icosahedron with a smaller sphere, pyramid, and cube orbiting it. It holds the entire dimension together, and it most certainly does not appreciate being razzed. Ball starts plummeting down as he screams and yells and cries in pure terror. After a long fall, he crashes straight into the Icosahearth.

And this is the exact moment that would trigger a chain of events so chaotic, it nearly ends up destroying the entire universe as we know it.

The Icosahearth goes haywire as it attacks Ball with weird glitchy beams coming from the shapes orbiting it. Ball screams in agony as he is struck. He starts to glitch out as his voice rapidly changes pitches, he flickers like a broken light, his colours spiral, his size changes, etc. Eventually, he starts being split into two, with his screams only becoming more blood curdling. The Icosahearth splits Ball into two different parts: his red rubbery lifeless body, and a strange glitched out version of his original body, effectively his soul. His lifeless corpse gets shrunk down into the size of a dodge ball, and his actual body is glitched even more. The beams from the Icosahearth get more and more intense until it seems like it’s about to explode. In a flash, both parts of Ball are transported elsewhere, as his backpack bursts into a cloud of paper from his documents. His notes fly at incredibly high speeds all around Aeon, glitching out and teleporting elsewhere in Aeon after a few seconds.

And just like that, it’s over. Pure silence. The Icosahearth fixes itself as it gets back into its original position.

Fading into Ball’s house, his new self glitches into existence. Ball coughs horrifically for severely seconds before gasping for air and getting his bearings. He gets up, and looks around, bewildered. He looks out his window, and realises where he is. He’s home. His corpse is nowhere to be found, but that doesn’t matter. Ball is finally home! After 6 years of being trapped in Aeon he’s finally home!! But then Ball feels something off. He realises he only has 1 arm. And only 1 leg, that’s somehow on the top of his head. The smile off his face is immediately wiped as he looks into a mirror, and there he was.

Glitchy.

Ball was no longer a vibrant red rubber ball, but instead a horrific atrocity to the eyes. He was a harsh purple, with different coloured chucks of himself hovering off him. He had a blue screen and a pop up message on opposite corners of him too. And his eyes were completely different. His left eye was round and bugged out, while his right eye was creepy and more anatomically correct. He wasn’t Ball anymore, he was Glitchy. His expression instantaneously turns to horror. Frantically, Glitchy grabs his landline phone and tries to call his mom. His mom picks up, but can’t recognise Glitchy’s new deep and bitcrushed voice as her son. Glitchy tries to explain that he is Ball, her son, but his mother suddenly became extremely furious at the mention of that name. She thought she lost his son all those years ago, and the remembrance of him from this random stranger who is probably prank calling her, sends her into a blind rage. Glitchy’s mom abruptly hangs up, but not before cursing out this mysterious caller. Glitchy felt his heart shatter into dust in his chest.

Glitchy desperately and almost instinctively teleports out of his house and goes to his family’s. He knocks on the door of his uncle, and tries to rekindle their relationship. But just like his mom, his uncle doesn’t recognise him, and slams the door in his face. Glitchy tries to do this with all the other members of his family, but he just gets the same result each time. Door slammed in the face. Glitchy becomes more and more frantic and he keeps teleporting to and knocking on doors. Eventually, every single one of his friends and family members have brushed him off, they’ve all moved on from his disappearance all those years ago. He’s completely defeated. He collapses on the sidewalk and begins to wail as people stare at him in pure confusion and disgust..

Over the next few months, Glitchy tries to live his life how he used to, but nothing goes right. He lost his job, all his plants died, his house is in ruins, and his friends and family don’t even know he exists anymore. Even with these newfound glitch powers he has, he’s still alone. As time goes on, Glitchy slowly starts to get more and more depressed and isolated. Several months later, Glitchy is pointlessly loitering in his dark and destroyed house. He stares out the window onto his city with an empty stare on his face. His breath hitches and starts to get more tense as his thoughts spiral. His thoughts spiral more and more as he thinks about everything that’s happened to him. He glances at a parked, yet running, car resting in an open garage. He peers at the exhaust pipe, and the gas emitting from it, then the garage door. He shakes his head and languidly floats away from the window.

Glitchy is resting at his desk, sitting on his chair. He turns around and gazes through his ravaged home. He glances up at the ceiling fan, before thinking about his chair. He groans and shakes his head again and hovers to his rotten kitchen.

Sitting at the dinner table, without any food of course, Glitchy sighs disappointedly. He turns his head over to his torn up kitchen counter, and focuses on the knives. He glares at them fiercely for several seconds, before blinking and regaining himself. His thoughts begin to race, filling up with unholy fantasies. After what felt like an infinite amount of time of perpetually spiraling deliberations, he forms an epiphany.

Glitchy teleports over to his desk, looks down at his hand, and points it at a broken pencil. Glitchy strains as he attempts to use his glitchy powers on it. He stumbles and takes breathers as the pencil gets more and more affected by his power. After several minutes of attempts, the pencil explodes, effectively erasing it from existence. Glitchy quietly exclaims in success. Over the course of a few more weeks, Glitchy practiced this newfound ability he has, until he felt like it was ready. After waking up on a new day, Glitchy prepares himself mentally. A few hours later, he finally conjures the courage to do what he’s been contemplating for months at this point. Glitchy teleports to the center of his house. With a lonesome gaze, he stares at seemingly nothing for a few seconds before turning to a framed picture of him and his entire family all together at a reunion. He turns back, and looks down at his hand, and takes a hitched deep breath and closes his teary eyes. Using the technique he’s practiced, he touches himself with his hand, and starts to glitch out, just like that pencil. Glitchy tries to bear the pain, but he eventually can’t anymore and screams in agony. The glitching gets more intense until eventually…

Glitchy explodes, leaving behind even more of a mess in his once beautiful home. The explosion knocks the photo of his family off the wall, hitting the floor and cracking the glass.

But… Glitchy didn’t actually explode. Rather, he got teleported elsewhere due to his unstable powers he has yet to fully learn to control. He thought he practiced enough, but really he was far too inadequate to pull it off than he originally expected. Fading into an empty grassland, Glitchy bursts into existence. He rubs his head as he gets up. He pats himself down, and sighs in disappointment. Completely defeated, Glitchy aimlessly hovers around. For what? He doesn’t even know. After what felt like hours of aimless wandering, he finds a tall metal sign reading “Welcome to Hoosnal!”. Pondering at how idiotic a name like that is, that’s when Glitchy hears them.

Chocoly, Peppermint, Sugar Cube, and all the others… Last Place, Host, Auto-Tuner, Lollipuff, Glassy, Alarm Clock, Puppet, Charger, Record, Gold Ingot, Jewel, Prism, Mountain, Mirror, Yang-Yin, Cauldron, Cigarette, Angry Face, Happy Face, Peanut Butter, Jelly, Tornado, Golden Apple, Jawbreaker, Diamond Pickaxe, Diamond Axe, Diamond Sword, Gravestone, Wing, Folder, Exclamation Point, Question Mark, Foily, Boxer, White Hole, the Cups, Fancy Pen, Good Bot, Evil Bot, Sunny, Moony, Twiggy, Button, Bandy, and Egg.

Glitchy realises he’s hearing civilisation, and looks around to spot them. He finds them in the distance, and approaches them sneakily. Glitchy hops in a bush that's far enough away to avoid suspicion, but still close enough to make out what they're all waffling about. All 48 of them are sitting on the grass, watching BFDI of all things on a huge screen like a drive-in theater. Glitchy stares at them, and notices how they’re all… getting along? They’re all laughing, like some kind of… family. Glitchy then spots his own corpse. His shiny, now small, red rubber corpse. For some reason, these people have it, increasing their count up to 49 instead of 48. It seems like his corpse teleported here when he got transported out of Aeon rather than teleporting to his house. Oddly enough, everyone seems to… like it? They all treat it like it’s some kind of living being who can understand them, when in reality it’s literally just a lifeless carcass. Glitchy continues to stalk as they’re all having fun together. After realising what he’s watching, Glitchy's expression quickly changes from curiosity to anger. His breath starts to get heavier as he gets more enraged. He spirals until he’s fuming and essentially foaming at the mouth. He gets extremely angry and prepares some sort of glitchy blast from his hand. But just before he does, he freezes.

He has an idea.

Every one of those people, they’re all so different, but they all have one thing in common: they all love BFDI. Glitchy forms a sick grin on his face as he begins to execute the starting phase of his plan. He teleports to an abandoned office, floating around and scanning the area. Quietly gasping, he finds a computer and heads straight towards it. Glitchy attempts to boot up the PC, but it won’t turn on. After much frustration, Glitchy slams his fist onto the computer, infusing it with his glitch powers. Suddenly, it turns on. Glitchy exhales in an annoyed relief. Glitchy used his knowledge of BFDI to form the basis for his evil plan. He thinks about IDFB. An unfinished season that fans desperately wanna see more of? That’s quite juicy. He then thinks out about BFB, and its prize. Deep fried seasonal blocks that contain video recordings of the 1st and 4th seasons of BFDI? Oh, that’s just perfect. Glitchy teleports himself to a deserted isolated area, bringing the computer with him, because he knows what he’s about to do will be extremely loud and attention-grabbing. Using every last ounce of strength he has, Glitchy uses his reality warping powers to attack the computer to conjure up something, just how Four did to create the BFDI. After several minutes, attempts, strain, struggle, and a complete pyrotechnic light show, Glitchy ends up creating… the IDFB. A deep fried seasonal block, just like the BFDI and the BFB, that contains all of the unpublished episodes of IDFB. Something like this shouldn’t even exist, but through pure rage and determination Glitchy somehow managed to materialise it into this dimension. Glitchy knows just how much all of those rabid BFDI fans would want a prize like this, they’d all go to extreme lengths and stop at nothing to get their grubby little hands on it. So now is when he strikes.

He teleports back to Hoosnal and transports the IDFB in plain sight. After several minutes, Chocoly notices it and grabs it. Excitedly, Chocoly and the others all look at it, Glitchy snickering from the bush. Suddenly, Chocoly gets an idea. She’ll create her own object show with herself and all 49 of her friends, and the IDFB could be the prize! She could be the main host, and Peppermint and Sugar Cube can be the cohosts! Oh, and apparently Last Place and Hosts can be the moral-support-co-cohosts since they demanded recognition. Glitchy giggles in excitement. His plan is going flawlessly. Chocoly’s object show will start all happy and goofy and whimsical, but as time goes on it’ll get more intense. It’ll become dark and gritty and gruesome. Tension and drama will rise throughout the show, tearing everyone apart and destroying their relationships, spreading nothing but pure agony and hatred. Soon, everyone will suffer the exact same fate he did. Glitchy then makes his move. Glitchy discreetly hops out of the bush he was hiding in, and shows up to the crowd to ask to join, claiming he just happened to be strolling past and heard something about a game show. Everyone looks at him confused, as they’ve never seen him before in their entire life. But of course Chocoly lets him compete anyway, increasing their total count to 50 instead of 49. 50 sounds way more appealing than 49 to the internet, after all.