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You have a near miss that almost kills you (maybe you almost got hit by a car, the plane you were supposed to go on ended up crashing, you narrowly dodged a falling piano, etc) and you're thanking your lucky stars that you're alive...until you realize that no matter who you talk to, no one responds to you. Strangers don't hear you on the street, friends don't return texts or calls and no one answers the door when you knock. It's almost like you're a ghost….for the next twenty-four hours, you appear invisible to every other person on the planet but then suddenly, out of the blue, it's like nothing has changed and none of your friends know what you're talking about when you explain the odd phenomenon. Was it all a dream?
He had been so stupid, but he thought he would have been able to make it. He cursed himself again and again in his head. Why? Why did I do that? It’s Fall, it’s bound to be slippery at this point. Erich continued to berate himself in his head. He had once again gone to do some rock climbing, if only to take his mind off of the amount of work he had to do for his graduate degree and had somehow fallen. Again. This time from a much higher height and without safety equipment, because apparently, he didn’t learn anything from the previous incident. Unlike last time however he hadn’t dislocated his shoulder, so he was very thankful he wouldn’t have to go into a fake clinic again and be attacked by “fellow” Negaverse agents once again. Or at least he planned on going to the main hospital the next time he had to.
Luckily nothing seemed to have happened to him, and so he had gone back to his apartment like usual and slept it off.
The next day however started out… weird. When he went to go and order breakfast, it was like the cashier couldn’t even see him. He had yelled to get their attention, and yet there was still no indication that he had been heard. In fact, no one else seemed to hear him either.
He grumbled to himself as he walked out of the café, still hungry, but not wanting to wait any longer and be late to class.
It was in class that he knew that something was definitely wrong. He had gone in, sat in his usual spot, the professor came in, and when he called out names, when Erich had responded in the positive that he was there in the classroom, the teacher continued to call out his name. As though Erich couldn’t even be seen. He was starting to get frustrated. Didn’t anyone notice him?! He even threw a pen at the professor, hitting him in the shoulder, and yet the professor acted as though he didn’t even feel it.
The dread started to settle in and Erich realized that something had happened. He wasn’t sure what it was, but it was clear that he was both invisible and couldn’t be heard by anyone. He had run back to the spot where he had fallen from, to see if there was anything associated with the Negaverse that he could see. Unfortunately, no matter how much he looked, he couldn’t see anything that would indicate the presence of something that had done this on purpose, such as a youma or a corrupted senshi. What could it mean though?
After a few more hours, he had sat down, not caring if there was any wildlife that could hurt him in the area such as bears or wolves. They wouldn’t be able to see, hear, or sniff him out either, he presumed. If they did then he wondered if he would ever get back to normal.
It hadn’t even been that long and yet he had given up already. It was a weird trait of his. While he was brave and was willing to face any danger, when it came to saving his own skin he was quite the coward in terms of fighting. He at least thought of himself as brave since he didn’t back down from camping out in the woods for a week or scaling a flat cliff with no safety gear, but the Negaverse… the Negaverse had made him question himself in so many ways, and he realized that he was a coward when it came to fighting.
He wasn’t sure if it was because he didn’t agree with the Negaverse and he had been forced into it, or if it was the chaos that continually ate at his mind every time he powered up, but he had been questioning himself for a while, and he hadn’t liked the answers that he had come up with. That he wasn’t as brave as he thought he was for one.
He had sat there, staring at the sky and the forest for what seemed like forever, trying to figure out what had gone wrong, and what he could do to fix it. Then he remembered something he had only been told in passing. It seemed that in the month of October that Chaos events were at an all-time high and that he should be careful, because they didn’t discriminate when it came to non-agents and agents.
Did that meant that something had happened? That ghost stories were real because they were actually the events of some chaos going crazy? He wasn’t sure, but he knew that he wouldn’t be able to get any agents that he knew to help him. They wouldn’t even be able to see him. But what did it mean otherwise? An out-of-body experience? He hadn’t seen his body anywhere. It was like he had gone into another plane or dimension that only he himself was in and no one else, and he could only observe the outside but was unable to really interact with anyone within the dimension that he was used to.
He stayed until the night, wondering if this was what he was supposed to do. Should he stay just to see if something would happen? Or should he go home and see if tomorrow would be any different?
He decided on the latter and had walked home, his heart beating in his chest from the unknown. Would he be able to go back to normal? Was he still going to be stuck in this Twilight Zone s***? He had no clue, but he knew that he needed some sleep at least. If he were to have any energy tomorrow, then he would need it.
He barely slept through the night, but somehow made it. And he had immediately gotten out of the bed as soon as he knew the café was open to shower and get ready for the day. Looking at his phone it read… as the same day he had just experienced?! He drew in a breath, almost unable to breath as he thought that he might be stuck in this day forever. He had practically rushed out of the apartment and into the café, if only to see what their reaction was. To his surprise, they looked at who had come through the door, and even they looked surprised that he was there. It took him a moment to catch up, but he realized that they were finally able to see him again! He walked up to them and ordered his usual, and they heard him! He wanted to scream with joy, but managed to keep himself from doing so, because he definitely would have looked like a weirdo then.
As he sat down at a table with his order, he went through his phone, trying to decipher what had happened. Instead he started to type it in as notes, to see if they would be useful later. That he had a near-death experience and when he had woken the next day, no one could interact with him and he couldn’t interact with them. It was just so… unnerving. And then he had woken up to the same day without any problems. As though he had a terrible dream that had just felt… too real.
He took out his laptop that he had brought with him and put the notes on it, making sure to hide it under something that wouldn’t make it look like he was completely crazy, but if he could find a more trustworthy Negaverse agent, perhaps he could ask them about it? He certainly couldn’t ask ‘his’ General, but perhaps one of the others would be more willing to talk to him about it? About the strange events that happened around this time.
He just felt so exhausted by it all that he thought about skipping classes for the day, but somehow managed to power through them. He could only breathe a sigh of relief once they were all over and he was able to work on what he needed to for them and went out to get some safety gear for climbing. He was not going to go without them and experience something like that again. He should have learned his lesson from the first time when he had to go to that stupid emergency clinic that turned out to be fake, but somehow, he had been too hard-headed about it.
Was it truly that unpredictable when it came to the Negaverse? To the point where even the agents that promoted it were also victims? He had been thinking about it for a while and realized that he needed to get out of the Negaverse, no matter what. Stuff like this… although he assumed that there should be a balance between darkness and light, or in this case Order and Chaos, the fact that Chaos seemed to be winning… there was no excuse for it. Perhaps if he could find one of those Order characters who had told him about getting out of the Negaverse, that he could still get out and keep his life…
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