Literature from Reverse World Pt1

If it wasn't so annoying it might have been interesting to consider how much longer it seemed to take to walk the halls of the residential area when they were occluded by this cloying darkness. The very slightly irregular placement of the broken lights scattered around contributed to the effect, Raven was sure, by making the spaces between them seem longer sometimes than others. For those not observant as him this would likely give the impression that the halls were warping and changing in size, added to by the shadows that seemed to creep around the edges of the light and swim in periphery of their vision, it would be quite mind bending.

This wasn't a problem for Raven however, as he walked down the halls, knocking on the doors to the rooms. As he walked, he constantly renewed his electric terrain effect, sending streamers of electricity arcing up and down the corridors as he passed through them. The rooms needed to be cleared to make sure no one was hiding out or trapped inside by the apparitions that periodically appeared to take potshots at anyone in sight. He'd already run into, and dispelled electrically, several of these, including one joker that had answered his knocking on the door by cracking the door and launching power gem attacks through.

Raven finished the line of rooms and turned to start down another corridor when the sound of a girl's frightened screaming sounded from further down, followed roughly a second later by a shadowed form launching through one of the opened doors and rushing straight at him. Raven raised his hand tentatively to prepare an attack then stopped as the thing rushing down the hall at him resolved into a limbless figure in a tattered dress with a pair of lady's gloves clutching something to her chest. It, likely another burster, probably a haunter or mismagius, appeared to be behaving as though chased by something. He changed his aim to focus on the door she'd burst out of, stepping to the side to let the ghost girl pass.

Unfortunately, it seemed the floating girl was of a similar mind as her course corrected to dodge where he'd been standing and she ended up in a collision course with Raven anyway. Bracing himself for the blow to come Raven was disoriented as the girl passed through him. Then he was jostled when the thing she was holding against her chest, an apparently non-ghostly object, caught between them for a moment before taking the path of least resistance to pass through its owner. Catching the item out of reflex, Raven turned to watch the girl who stop just past him then pale and flee again at something on his other side.

Raven's eyes whipped back to the point where the girl had come from to see Esrever, red hair whipping around like a flame, sweeping out of the room in pursuit of the escaping ghost. His tentacle wings stretched out and seemed to dig into the air to propel the dark godling forward. Fingers twitching around his new belonging, Raven hesitated slightly as he tried to decide where a faceful of lightning would fall on the "do not touch Esrever" advice they'd been given earlier. As he approached Esrever’s eyes briefly met Raven’s and the man could make out the overwhelming aggravation that drove the other’s frenzied action. Then the dark man’s eyes slid from Raven’s down to his chest at what he was holding. Raven flinched as Esrever outraged cry screeched through the hall and his body darkened and expanded as the red parts glowed an even more vicious red. Then Esrever was gone in an blur of red, black and gold, sweeping past Raven and after the ghost girl, faster than Raven’s stunned mind could follow.

"Coming through," Jack's voice called out, forcing Raven to turn back again in time to see a brownish colored blur in the gloom jump and sail over his head. A second later the back of Jack's feathery trenchcoat and weird hair tail thing disappeared around the corner where Esrever and the ghost warrior had passed moments before.

"Stop running," Jack's yelling drifted back to Raven, "It won't save you!"

Seconds ticked by and Raven considered what had just happened. Failing to understand, he finally stopped to get a good look at what the ghost girl had accidentally shoved into his arms. It appeared she’d been holding a laptop open and flush against her chest, held so wide open that Raven privately wondered that she hadn’t worried about snapping it in half accidentally. Seeing that the screen was still glowing Raven turned it around and instantly understood why Esrever’s rage had redoubled even as Raven himself was struck by a fit of laughter that came out as a series of choked coughs.

Pictured on the laptop screen was Jack tenderly cupping Esrever’s chin in one hand exchanging not-inexplicable expressions but not ones that he wanted to have to explain to the uninformed. He did think the sparkles were a nice touch, though there probably could have been more, and better defined. Still for something that had to have been produced in the time since Esrever dumped them back in the shadowy halls of the facility, and it had to have been produced in that time since the image showed Jack in his current Burst form. Walking over to the balcony overlooking the area that fed into the Dome, Raven placed on the railing and started clicking around on the screen. It appeared the picture was inserted into a much larger document. Scrolling up he found a large column of words before he ran into another picture of Esrever and Jack, similar to the first but with Jack in one of his older forms. Curiosity still besieging him, Raven scrolled in the other direction and found that text extended after the first image as well. How interesting, he thought as he stopped to actually skim what was written.

“No, you can’t,” Esrever squeaked as Jack leaned over him, hand reaching out, “Don’t touch me! If you do I’ll explode.” The dark god blushed and waved trying to force Jack to give him space so he could run again.

Jack’s hand instead whipped out and grasping Esrever’s chin pulled the surprised man’s face closer.

“But I want you to explode, Es,” Jack said in a smooth voice, “I want you to explode for me over and over again.”

“I- but how?” Esrever stuttered at Jack’s continued contact without an Earth shattering kaboom.

“As if I’d let something as stupid as aggravated anti-particles keep me away from you,” Jack replied, leaning in closer to-

Raven stopped reading with a cringe and decided to spare himself the knowledge of what Jack was about to do. Still, it wasn’t his place to judge other people’s choice in literature, so Raven clicked the save button on the program to make sure any work that’d been done wasn’t lost when he got the computer back to its owner.

He stopped again at the sight of the files in what was apparently named the “shipfic” folder. The stories, and included images, judging by the file sizes, weren’t saved by title but by pairing. He briefly noted that most of the names were of individuals he didn’t know but some, like Jack and Esrever’s jumped out at him.

Esrever/Adamas/Pearle
Esrever/Jack(T/B)
Esrever/Jack(B/T)
Esrever/Jack(B/T)2
Esrever/Jack(Bodyswap)
Esrever/Jack(Fusion)
Esrever/Pearle
Esrever-Pearle-Adamas(Triangle)
Esrever/OC

Finishing saving the file, “Esrever/Jack(?)” because he had no idea how these naming conventions worked, he then opened the directory again and leafed through the names. Whoever the ghost girl was she was apparently quite prolific in her writing and random in her taste in pairs. Down around the N names Raven had another minor fit when he spotted his own name in the lists.

Nico/Perle
Nico/Perle(63-N)
Nico/OC
Nico/Raven
Nico/Raven2
Nico/Raven3
Nico/Raven4
Nico/Raven(63-N)
Nico/Raven OTP
Nico/Raven OTP2</i>
Nico-Raven-Taz(Triangle 63-NT)
Nico/Tash
Nico/Tash/Taz
Nico-Tash-Taz(Triangle Tash/TazWins)
Nico/Taz

For a moment tried to unravel the meaning behind the various filenames, but decided that way lay madness. His mind helpfully supplied that apparently the write chose pairings randomly based on how often he’d seen them together. Some of the groupings here were crazy. Himself and Niko, she’d probably be annoyed by all those misspellings in the file names, that was a crazy pairing. There’s no way it would ever happen. Raven let out a short laugh that wasn’t forced at all and then coughed getting back to business.

It might be interesting to see how this fictional version of him managed relationships, Raven reasoned to himself as he moved the cursor over one of the Nico/Raven files. Purely as an exercise to see how observers viewed him it could offer some interesting insights. He opened the file.

“Whatcha looking at?” Niko’s voice asked from over his shoulder.