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*Beep*

"Diz? What is this about? I was in the middle of something very important."

"I come with some bad news, Viz. Somehow, Subject #1193 has escaped stasis, AND the mothership. Also-"

"Well, if it's just one subject, it won't matter. They don't know what happened anyways."

"Viz, let me-"

"S'cuse me, but what's this meeting about again?-"

"Shut up, Quiz."

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"So, Viz, if you'll so kindly allow me to finish what I was saying, I was going to tell you that the other 6 subjects have also dissapeared alongside Subject #1193 in individual clips of time, yet they were all following quickly after Subject #1193 vanished. Whenever I looked at the security footage at the time of their dissapearance, all I can see is static for a couple moments before the camera turns back on and the subject seems to have dissapeared from their cell."

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"So.......let me get this straight. Every single subject has dissapeared?"

"Yes."

"And there are no traces of where they could have gone? No guard was watching when they dissapeared?"

"Yep."

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"Fuck."

"Well, do you think that they maybe somehow got transported back to Earth? It's the only place they could have gone."

"Quiz, for once, you aren't completely useless. Viz, did you remember to install those trackers on them for safety measures a couple months ago?"

"Yes. I made sure that they were implanted weeks before you asked."

"Good. Quiz, go give yourself a purpose in your meaningless life and set the ship's course to planet Earth. We only have 2 humans we need to retrieve back"

"On it."

*Beep*

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"Thank the stars that nuisance is finally gone."

"Oh, shut up. At least he pulls his worth sometimes. Right now, we have to focus on more pressing matters. You said that we needed to retrieve 2 humans, and I just need you to clarify if those two subjects are Subject #5660 and Subject #6553. I also wan-need to know what happened in the simulation that Subject #1193 was in and what happened afterwards."

"Fine. For your clarification, yes, I am talking about Subject #5660 and Subject #6553 for the 2 humans we would need to obtain from Earth. And for your question, the simulation started out as intended, when it started malfunctioning. Somehow, in some impossible way, the timeline from the simulation connected to the reality world in which the place was originally situated on Earth, and because humans are so corrupted, one of their own managed to enter Subject #1193's timeline to shoot up the school that Subject #1193, Subject #3245, Subject #5660, and Subject #4751 was sent to."

"Why don't we just use the subjects' real names? It's getting quite annoying having to hear you say 'Subject this'  and 'Subject that' over and over again."

"FINE. After that, the school was shut down and we lost our grip on Phil's mind for a while, though 3 other subjects' minds, Subject #3245 (Fred), Subject #5660 (Xack), and Subject #4751 (Frowny), went completely silent and unresponsive even after we were able to restore the timeline back to where it was separate from reality. Their bodies seemed to go into a self-stasis, so we decided to remove the stasis barrier from them and put them into stasis tubes instead in case they managed to wake up during that time.

"Nothing happened for a while after that, when a couple months later, Phil's mind started sending in massive waves of brain activity from his neural system, as if he had just restarted himself back up again. Yet, there were no active responses from his nervous system or from other body activity, so we just questioned why his mind had suddenly jumped back into activation. A couple weeks later, and we find out that all 7 subjects had dissapeared, and, in Quiz's theory, somehow returned back to Earth."

"Ok, that does answer my first question, but I have another. What are your intentions with those 2 humans that are you are going to be retrieving back? In other words, Xack and Zach?"

"Alright, so you know how those trackers that you set on all of them can also track gene pulse waves?"

"Yes?"

Xack and Zach have those genes that you saw with your own eyes, if you remember, that could power up 2 death rays at the same time and destroy 2 planets at once, and right now Zach's genes, as I've seen from the tracker, are currently in some sort of frenzy. It's as if Zach's genes had just hit puberty. Meanwhile, Xack's genes have stayed dormant ever since he went into some sort of a self-stasis, but they're still active enough in circulating throughout his body

"That's the worst plan I have ever heard you make up. Let's do it."

*Beeeeep*

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Phil awoke with a start, looking around to see that he was no longer in a pitch-black void listening to voices that spoke of plans to abduct his friends, but instead in the same room that he had fallen asleep in last night.

Also, for some reason the voices were in subtitles and were colored, but it was just a dream, so he supposed it made enough sense.

He was surprised that he could even go to sleep, considering that he was a ghost and all (and the fact that he could never go to sleep beforehand due to insomnia, or that was just the school bathroom's unsettling night look talking.)

He swung his legs over the side of the bed before hopping off and floating through the closed door. He looked down the hallway, seeing the dim lighting that signified that it was probably soon to be that time in the morning for a certain someone to be awake and getting ready for school.

Yet, there was no sign of someone stirring in their bed and getting up, or even an alarm clock going off.

That confused him, since he distantly remembered having to wake up before the sun rose into the sky to get ready for school, and he was sure that it was still a week day. He shrugged to himself before heading over to Smiley's room and mustering up enough spiritual energy in his hand to knock on the door.

A small groan of protest could be heard from the other side, and he was almost certain that Smiley had just covered her head with her pillow and gone back to sleep.

He sighed, before phasing through the wood and going up to Smiley's bed, and just as he had thought, the brunette had the pillow pulled over her head and was once more softly snoring. Grabbing the pillow, he yanked it from Smiley's grip and watched as she quickly flinched in surprise and sat up, before turning to him and glaring venomously.

"Wakey wakey." He dead-panned, before gently tossing the pillow back to her (which she caught perfectly and laid back down on the bed), and watched as she begrudgingly hopped out of the bed and went to brush her hair. An odd question popped in his mind, but he couldn't help it as his mouth opened to ask it.

"So, did you have any odd dreams last night?" He asked, already feeling stupid for asking, but he did want to know if she had the same dream as he did last night, or if he was just going crazy.

Smiley looked at him like he was idiot. "Well, yeah, no duh. It was a dream about cockroaches ruling the land while lions and cows were their servants, and a rebelling legion of oppressed capybaras and yucca plants were secretly scheming to take them down from above the sky." Phil blinked in surprise. He certainly hadn't expected that type of answer from Smiley. 

But, c'mon, this was Smiley he was talking about. He could never really expect anything normal from her. Or from any of his new friends, really. And he had only just met them about 15 hours ago.

Progress. 

Phil decided to go ahead downstairs while he was waiting for his friend to finish up, when he noticed the bathroom door open. Floating in, he looked curiously at the sink, and he turned it on before putting his arm underneath the water and sighing in dissapointment when the water simply phased through his arm even when he centered spiritual energy around that area.

Abandoning the idea, he came out of the bathroom and floated down the stairs to see Smiley already eating breakfast, and a sad feeling came over him once he realized that he would never be able to taste milk or his favorite cereal again.

Anyways, he noticed Smiley's mom coming into the kitchen, and she cleared her throat to make sure that she had both Smiley and Phil's attention.

"So, I've decided that Phil can stay as long as he causes no trouble and cleans up any mess that he makes, alright? This.....this is all still a lot to take in, but as long as Phil doesn't plan to murder anyone and he makes sure to respect the times when someone needs privacy, he can stay as long as he needs to." Smiley's mom told them, before yawning and turning around to go back to her bedroom. "Smiley, make sure you arrive to school on time with Phil, ok? I'm gonna go back to sleep." 

"Ok mom." The brunette called after her as she watched her mother slowly retreated back to the master bedroom, before looking back at her cereal bowl and making sure to eat every single cheerio that was left.

Once Smiley was done, she picked up her bowl and placed it in the sink before grabbing her backpack from where she had last placed it. Motioning to Phil, she asked "You ready to go?"

The ghost nodded, and followed his friend out the door. The walk to Riddle School Elementary was rather uneventful, unless you took into account the massive amount of onlookers staring at them like they were psycopathic knife-wielding murderers walking around in broad daylight.

They soon arrived at the front of the school, and Smiley pushed open the double doors that led directly to the only hallway that the school still had intact from the traumatic shooting about 15 years back (for Phil, looking around the corridor was like looking into a portal in the past, even if he had only woken up as a confused spirit with 1/3 of their memory gone in the same Men's bathroom that he had died in about 2 years ago).

They walked a short distance down the hallway to reach Ms. Cophey's classroom, and Phil suddenly got hit with a truckload of nostalgia as he saw Smiley open the door (J̵̘͈͚̠̝͊u̷̡̦̩͆̽̅̑͘̕ͅs̸̪̊̆̓t̴̪͈̝̭͈̘͇͚͓̒͋̋͂̌͒̈́̒͘͘ ̴̼̝̤̬͙͓͝ą̸̛̲̲̰̙͚̺̘̰͚̎̒̀̈͋́̀͠ș̶̋͋̈́̔̀̿͌͋͝ ̵̢̮̓̈͒͂F̵̧̣͈͊̀̾̾̓͑͝ͅȑ̵̨͔̭̖̣͈̫͔͇̋̈̈́́̒̿̽̆o̸͙̙͓̬̤̐w̷̧͙̮͕̯͂̔̋̒́͝n̴͔̗̤̥̥̈́̆̂̂̈́̏ỳ̸͕̭̙͙̦̱͉͖ ̸̧̛̬̤̤̠̪̩̫̭̖̏̐̅̏͌̋̓͛ḑ̷͓̝̳̻̲̙͍͌̉̃͋̓i̷̦͕̔̄̋́̂ḑ̶͈͓̔̑͋̐̕ ̶̭̮̀̒͗͂̑͠t̴͔̳̱͎̪̦͙͛̐̂̓͌̈́̒͠h̸̡̦͒͐̽̚a̵̼̻̳̣͐t̵͍͈͇̀̽ ̵̛̛͇͖̅̎́̏́̚͜͠d̵͖̜̖̠̼͊̿a̶̛͉̙͒̀̊̄̔́̇̓y̷̛̳̺̼̲͈̼̻̱͆́͌̓͂̈́̂͝), and they looked into the classroom to see Phred and Zach already there, waiting rather impatiently with an annoyed expression on their faces (though Zach was still shivering violently from his weird disease-thingy).

"About time you two arrived here. We've been waiting here for forever." Phred instantly complained, and the two entering students looked at him weirdly.

"But I thought the school day basically just started? Also, where's Ms. Cophey?" Smiley questioned, her usually optmistic smile currently twisted into a confused frown. Phred just shrugged.

"She wasn't here when we arrived, hasn't been here ever since you guys arrived, and in about 5 minutes, the school bell signaling that the school day has officially started will go off and she still isn't here. So, I dunno." Phred replied, looking over at the teacher's desk for a moment with a bored expression before turning back to them.

The brunette huffed before walking over to her usual seat and setting her bag down. She looked at all three of them and asked, "So, any of you guys down for searching for a reasonable explanation as of why Phil here is a ghost since we currently have nothing else to do with our lives?"

Phred shrugged again nonchalantly. "Why not? It's better than sitting here for 8 hours."

Zach, whom was still shaking from his body's own produced cold even though he had 4 sweaters on him, looked at them with pleading eyes. "I will come and do whatever you want me to do a long as it's warmer than it is in here."

Smiley nodded, before beckoning them out of the room and out into the hallway. Phred slowly rose from his chair before following the brunette out of the room, Zach basically racing out after them. 

Phil blinked, before going after his friends and shutting the classroom door behind him.

They arrived at the boy's restroom, and Smiley waited for Phil to come over before beginning to explain what they would do.

"Ok, since I respect a restroom's privacy as a normal civilian should, I want you three boys in there while I come up with places for you guys to look at and search through.

"Zach, I want you investigating the tiles for anything out of the ordinary that you haven't really paid any attention to before. And I will assure you that the bathroom a most definitely warmer than the temperature in the hallway." At that, Zach instantly perked up and rushed into the bathroom.

"Phred, I want you looking around the sinks and in the stalls for anything out of the ordinary. If you see anything that could mean something meaningful, report back to me after your investigation." Phred nodded stiffly whilst sloppily mock-saluting, before following after their eternally cold friend's trail.

Smiley watched them dissapear into the bathroom before turning to Phil and asking, "Hey Phil, can you come over here for a moment? I want to talk to you for a moment."

The spirit nodded and floated over to where Smiley was heading, and they stopped near Ms. Cophey's door before Smiley turned to face him with a slightly serious expression.

"If....if it's alright with asking, I guess I want to know what really happened on the day of the school shooting." The usually cheery girl asked slowly, and Phil noticed that ever since he had met and been around her, she didn't really smile as much as their other friends said she would.

(Did he cause that? Was he making everyone around him unhappy?)

His attention quickly shifted away from the pessimistic thoughts that meandered throughout his mind and instead focused on the touchy question at hand. He debated answering it, before realizing that they wouldn't really be able to figure out how and why he had came back into the real world without some sort of more detailed backstory.

The ghost internally sighed, before nodding at the question and (rather reluctantly) recalling the traumatic memories that had possibly scarred him for as long as his life went.

"Well, it started out as a normal school day, one that was basically like this one. It even had the same entrance, y'know, where Frowny would be opening the door to Ms. Hikkup's classroom while I stood off to the side, and Fred and Xack would already be in their seats, the exact same seats that Phred and Zach were in."

"As the school day went on, I got tired of hearing about Ms. Hikkup's conspiracy theories on whether or not a crossiant was possibly of Polish origin, and I got this idea of 'Hey, what if we just escaped school early?' And, well, I told the plan to my friends without the teacher noticing, and before long we had knocked out Ms. Hikkup using a feather duster that was conveniently in the trash can since our teacher was somehow allergic to feather dusters themselves and not only the actual dust."

"And.......we were walking down the hallway, the one that we're currently standing in, actually, when there's this loud 'BANG!' that comes from the hallway next to ours, an-and I recognized that noise, a-and it was a gunshot." By now, Phil's stumbling over his words as tears flow down his face as fast as a waterfall, but he continues to go on as the vivid memories flash into his vision and make it seem like he was right back there, running for his life down a hallway that carried the echoes of the screams that were emitted just from the hallway next to his.

"M-me and my f-friends reach this 4-way intersection, a-and we a-all agree to sp-split up to make it harder f-for whoever the person w-with the g-gun is, and I de-decide to book it bac-ck to the restroom and h-hide in t-there. I-I'm sitting on this-this toilet seat in a st-stall wh-while I hear m-my fri-friends screaming from across t-the school, and there's all these gun-gunshots still going around-" Phil chokes out, his non-existant breaths having already started accelerating, as his void-like eyes somehow seemed more glazed over than before. 

Smiley's face of concern quickly turned into one of worry and panic, and without warning, she wraps him into a tight hug. 

The two grow quiet as Phil slowly but surely calms down, but they both soon notice that Smiley is hugging him. With physical contact. Physically.

What.

They both slowly back away from each other, when Phil looks Smiley straight in the eyes and asks, "What the fuck."

Smiley's surprised and concerned demeanor quickly changes into one of irritation. "Hey! That's a bad word! You shouldn't be saying that!"

A small 'sorry' was mumbled by the suddenly bashful hoodie-wearing ghost, before Phil gained back enough courage to look at his quite intimidating frustrated friend again, albeit with a sad, apologetic gaze.

Smiley's angered expression quickly dropped at the sign of her ghosty friend getting sad. "Oh, I'm sorry Phil. I was just kinda joking with you, I hope I wasn't too harsh."

Phil nodded his head a tiny bit, looking away for a moment before deciding to break the strong tension that weighed in the air.

"So, I don't quite get how you can touch me if I didn't center any energy throughout my body to make myself physical enough to touch anything, or anyone. Do you have any idea how?" He asked, trying to quickly change the topic, and Smily went along gratefully with the new change of conversation.

"Nope! Uh, not a single idea in here, hehe. But how about we go check on the boys, see how they're doing with their search and stuff, hm?" The yellow-skinned girl asked, and Phil quickly nodded his head in agreement before following her back over to the Men's restroom.

As they sadly expected, the two boys didn't find any reasonable clues in the bathroom even after 20 minutes of searching, though Zach did say that the bathroom seemed way warmer than the rest of the school.

They decided to not question it.

After walking back to the class, Phil was sat down in one of the corners in the room, absorbing the mindless chatter into his brain as comforting background noise as he played with a piece of string that he found on the floor (that was probably pulled from someone's sock), when his mind snapped back into focus when the words "escape school" left Phred's mouth. After that, the talking continued to go on in front of him, but he was currently started to spiral into another panic attack as the flashes of memory danced across his pitch-black eyes.

Just was it was starting to get worse though, his name was called out again and he was thankfully snapped out of it, still in enough control of his mind to muster out a small "What?".

The three that sat in their desks looked at him, Phred and Zach being concerned, whilst Smiley had a knowing and pitying look in her eyes. Phil shifted around uncomfortably with all of them staring at him.

"Dude, are you ok there? You were freaking out again." Phred asked, and Phil hastily shook his head to rid his vision of the flickering pieces of movement that raced around in his peripheral vision.

"Oh, no! I'm all good! Just fine! Now, what where you guys talking about again?" Zach and Phred looked at him like he was half camel and had dragon wings growing out of his armpits, before they both simultaneously sighed.

"Alright, look. Phil, you aren't fooling anyone into thinking that you're all peachy n' stuff, but if you want to avoid it that badly for now, we'll let it slide. So, we were talking about possibly leaving school early again since we can basically just walk out the door. We stole and hid the key, if you remember, so they couldn't lock the side doors anymore, and since they're stupid and lazy, they didn't get a replacement key and just left the doors open." Phred explained, still slightly concerned about Phil's mentality, and the ghost made sure to listen intently so that he wasn't pulled back into the madness that was currently raging on in the depths of his mind.

Phil hesitated for a moment, not sure on whether or not he should risk them getting killed since this day almost seemed too similar to the day that he had died, but he decided to go 'fuck it' and agree to the plan.

Zach whooped in excitement, Smiley actually genuinely smiled for once in a couple of hours,  and Phred still looked at him suspiciously before sighing and grabbing his backpack from the ground.

Once they were out of the school, the trio of still-alive humans all stretched themselves to get rid of the tension of being in school, and they chatted inbetween each other for a while when suddenly, a green beam was cast onto Zach, and the freezing boy started to slowly rise into the air.

The three on the ground stood there for a moment, not really processing what had just happened, when Smiley snapped back into reality first and grabbed onto Zach's legs, when she too slowly rose into the sky.

Phred shook his head before grabbing onto Smiley's legs, and Phil followed soon after in grabbing onto Phred's legs, surging concentrated energy into his hands to allow him to not slip off and slowly float back to the ground. It was amazing how gravity didn't affect him but also did at the same time. 

A medium alien ship soon came into view, as it was hidden above the oddly very packed-together clouds, and the green beam soon sucked them into the belly of the beast.

Once they were inside, the floor closed beneath them and the beam dropped them to the ground via being turned off by a mysterious person.

The four looked around curiously, muttering amongst each other questioningly when they heard footsteps against the cold metal ground. A red, 4-armed alien guy with rather sharp-looking sunglasses on appeared from the shadows ominously, and a terrifying grin crawled up their face when they saw that their mission had been a success.

Phil shuddered when he realized the sheer reality of the situation. They were stuck on an alien mothership, probably the one that he heard those voices in his 'dream' confer about, miles above the ground (and they were probably going to be farther away if his suspicions proved to be true), with a red, cynical-looking alien with 4 arms and cool-as-fuck sunglasses on (of which he hated to admit, but it was true, in his opinion) seeming as if he was about to murder all of them right then and there.

Then, to his uttermost surprise, the alien snapped their fingers and said, in english, "Take them away." before walking back into the shadows.

Then, alien guards stepped out of the shadows as well and prodded them with electrical pokey sticks towards different cells, though the only reason that Phil was moving, was because instead of the sticks of just phasing through his body, they could actually shock him, and it hurt.

So, if ever so begrudgingly, he tried his best to act like he wasn't a ghost whilst he was herded like cattle towards a strong-looking cell door. One of the guards swiped a key card against the barcode before shoving Phil in and shutting the door with another swipe of the card.

Phil sighed. Well, this was certainly something he hadn't expected to happen today. Being abducted by aliens was probably far down on his list of possible things to happen today.

Then again, he WAS a ghost that came back from the dead 13 years after he had died with no explanation as of why it happened, so he supposed that anything could be possible now.

With another heavy sigh, the spirit flopped onto the bed, another weird thing that he remembered about being a ghost was that he didn't phase through beds for some very odd reason before he allowed sleep to envelope him in its warm embrace.

It's not beta read, so be warned.

But also 4182 words pog lmao