Chapter Text
One minute, Paul was working a shift at CCRP like normal. The next, he’d drifted off to sleep, and woken up in an unusually dark room.
“Hello?!” he called out, suddenly super unnerved. “Did someone kill the lights in here?”
Granted, he didn't know who it could have been. Bill was away visiting his daughter in Clivesdale, Charlotte had taken a personal day for couples’ therapy, and Ted hadn't clocked into work in weeks. He supposed it could’ve been Melissa or Mr. Davidson, but a prank like this seemed out of character for both.
It took a moment for someone to call back, but finally, he heard a familiar voice: “Hello?!”
His heart skipped a beat. “Bill?!”
After another moment of moving around, Paul at last found his best friend, seemingly just as dazed as he was.
“Paul? What's going on? What are you doing here?” he wondered.
“You tell me! I thought you were off with Alice today!”
“I was! We’d just gotten home, but when I went to call it a night, I woke up here!”
So the two were in some sort of shared dream state?
Before either of them could say anything more, they caught wind of another figure rising to her feet.
A figure that, upon closer look, seemed to resemble Paul's wife.
“Emma?” he asked, his confusion only growing.
As he offered a hand to help her up, Emma started screaming.
“It's okay, Em,” said Bill, in an attempt to calm her down. “It's just us. It's Bill and Paul. You're okay.”
“No! Shut up!” she shouted as she scrambled to her feet. “Don't start singing again! Stop!”
“Uh, hi. Paul Matthews. Nice to meet you,” Paul sarcastically replied, his confusion only growing. Why would Emma think he, of all people, was going to sing?
Emma stared at the guys for a moment, and then said, with a much quieter voice: “Wait, are you…actually Paul?”
“I'm the guy you fell in love with, if that's what you mean,” he replied, careful to protect their secret around Bill.
“Wait, but, how is that possible? The last time I saw you, you were…you were…”
“Ah, I see people are showing up! Welcome, fwiendy-wends!”
All three of them jumped back as they heard this ominous voice appear from nowhere. “Wha–who are you?!” Emma asked.
“No one good!” came another voice, this one much kinder-sounding. The trio turned around to see a teenage fem with a denim hood on, holding the hand of a younger, possibly tween fem in pigtails as they ran up to them.
Their appearance puzzled the trio further. They all knew each other, of course–even Emma and Bill at least recognized each other due to their respective connections to Paul. But these two were completely new to them all.
“Good to see you, too, Fosters,” the ominous voice said with a layer of sarcasm.
“You were destroyed!” the younger Foster replied with disbelief. “You burned!”
“Silly girl! You can't destroy a Lord in Black for good!”
“You’re a Lord in Black?”
Another new voice appeared, this one belonging to a soft-spoken redhead dressed in 80s-style fashion.
“See? Miss Holloway knows who we are,” the voice said with pride.
“Okay, seriously, what the Hell is going on?!” Emma asked. “Why are we all here, and where is here?”
“Patience, Emma. There's still three more pally-walls who have yet to arrive!”
The group started looking around for any unfamiliar faces. The older Foster was the first to notice someone–a masc roughly their age with long black hair and a black jacket, who appeared to be speaking to a fem in a red dress.
“Ethan?” she spoke up, tapping the masc on the shoulder.
He quickly and awkwardly spun around. She looked awkward, too, as her face fell. Ethan didn't need glasses, and the jacket was for a tux, not the black leather jacket he usually wore.
“Uh, my name's Peter, actually,” he sheepishly introduced himself. “And this is my girlfriend, Stephanie.” He motioned to the girl in the red dress, who waved in response.
“Right. Sorry. I thought you were someone else.” They cleared their throat. “I'm Lex. My younger sister’s Hannah, the redhead’s Miss Holloway, and…I didn't catch anyone else's name.”
Paul took over the introductions, pointing at each of the remaining people as he said: “Paul Matthews. Emma Perkins. Bill Woodward.”
“Wait, Paul Matthews? From CCRP?” Peter spoke up with an air of recognition. “I’ve heard so much about you from my brother, Ted! Apparently you two are close friends?”
“Work friends,” Paul admitted with a sigh. Leave it to Ted to exaggerate their relationship.
“Not to break up the awkwardness,” Emma cut in, “but didn't the…Lord…something…?”
“Wiggly,” Hannah tried to help her out.
Emma's eyes narrowed. “Weird name, but okay. Didn't Wiggly say there were three more people here? Pete, Steph, did you come with anyone?”
“No, we…” Stephanie started, before her eyes widened. “Lord?!”
“A Lord in Black,” Hannah clarified. “My friend, Webby, is their sister.”
“Wait, Webby knew Wiggly the whole time?!” Lex replied, as if they themselves were just now discovering this information. “And all she said to warn you were random phrases?! I’d like a word with her!”
“Well, Pete and I made a deal, and the Lords were supposed to leave us alone, so I’d like a word with them!” Stephanie added, her own anger increasing.
“And I’d like a word with whoever put us in a dark room! It's impossible to walk!”
The group turned to see who was presumably the last person to get pulled in–a clumsy-looking teenage fem wearing headgear and a yellow sweatshirt.
“Ruth?!” Peter stared at her with disbelief. Stephanie followed suit.
Ruth looked up and gave them a smile in return. “Hey, Pete! Steph! Didn't know you were coming to the show! Sorry about the lights…and my performance…” She groaned. “Today is killing me!”
“More than she knows,” Stephanie whispered in her boyfriend's ear, still freaked out.
Peter was even worse–he opened his mouth three times in an attempt to form a full sentence, but his brain was too fried.
“Ah, I see all of our mortal fwiendy-wends have finally arrived!” Wiggly announced. “Then, at last, allow me to explain your little…situation. You see, there's more to Hatchetfield than just the chain of events you have lived through. With the exception of the Fosters and Peter and Stephanie, who we brought in as package deals, each one of you is from a completely unique timeline from the rest.”
“Different timelines…that explains a lot, weirdly enough,” Emma said sheepishly, avoiding looking into Paul’s eyes.
“But that still doesn't explain why we're all together,” Miss Holloway pointed out.
“That’s because my brothers and I have been experimenting,” Wiggly explained. “We’ve been trying to keep a record of the timelines here in the Black and White. We’ve brought you all here, to our home dimension, for one simple task.”
As he said this, a TV set with a VCR materialized in front of them, as did a couch and some chairs.
“Watch all the tapes. View your timelines through our point of view,” he finished.
“You pulled us to another dimension just to watch some tapes?” Lex questioned. “There has to be a catch!”
“The catch is that if you don't, you’ll be stuck here long enough for your souls to be absorbed into this dimension!”
“I vote for watching the tapes,” Paul quickly replied.
Miss Holloway nodded and looked at the tapes lined up on the shelf right by the TV set. “This seems easy enough! The tapes all have labels with our names on them: ‘Emma,’ ‘Lex/Hannah,’ ‘Stephanie/Peter,’ ‘Bill,’ ‘Paul,’ ‘Miss Holloway,’ and ‘Ruth.’”
“Well, it sounds like we’ll have to get through them all eventually, so we may as well just pick one to start with,” Emma pointed out. “Anyone here good at selecting things at random?”
“I think so,” said Bill. “I’ll use a trick I taught Alice when she was seven and couldn't pick an ice cream flavor at the mall. Miss Holloway, if you would please assign each tape a number in your head?”
She nodded in agreement, and Bill closed his eyes. He counted to five, and then said, “Okay, I choose tape number three!”
“Three is the number I gave Emma’s tape!” Miss Holloway announced. She then slid the tape into the VCR and pressed the play button.
“Welp, I hope you all like trainwrecks!” Emma groaned as she slumped onto the far left side of the couch.
Paul sat next to her. “Come on, Em. I'm sure it's not gonna be that bad.”
“I appreciate that, Paul, but I know for a fact you're going to agree with me in about ten minutes. At most.”
“Hey, it's Hatchetfield,” Lex cut in, sitting with Hannah on the opposite end of the couch. “Most of our tapes are probably gonna be trainwrecks. I wouldn't worry about it too much.”
Emma nodded. Lex had a point.
Bill, Miss Holloway, and Ruth each took folding chairs, while Stephanie and Peter curled up together in a bean bag chair.
Once everyone was in position, the first tape finally began.