After 10,000 years I'm finally free! Time to conquer Earth!

Wait... wrong source material.

Well anyhow, It's me again, GreyLoki, trying my hand at writing after not uploading for an entire year (give or take a month)

Had to start from scratch with this chapter, as my original laptop died on me.

Hopefully you all enjoy the following chapter.

Pls leave a review/critique at the end. I like getting your feedback.

~Rick's Perspective~

A throbbing pain in the back of my head is the first thing I notice. The next is the warmth emanating from my left eye. I wince as there is a raw feeling coming from it. I limply lift my hand towards my face, touch under the eye and flinch as it stings. Fighting through the pain I gingerly map the area surrounding the eye with my hand. An all-too-familiar mound of warm flesh under fur where my eye is lets me know I have a black eye. I begin to open my eyes; my right one being the only one able to open enough to see out of. The ceiling tiles had a telltale stain.

"Is I upon the caregiver office?" I ask aloud confusingly as I sit myself up on the tall cot.

"Yes?" you are says the band-aid nurse, Ms. Markham, looking as though she's just done with everything, "how do you feel?"

She flashes a small light in my eye as she checks my pupil.

"Rickety, unstable, and hollow," I answer her, still mixed up.

"All the symptoms of secondhand playground equipment," she says unfeelingly as she she gets a pack of frozen out of the school issued Styrofoam cooler. She places the pack in my hand and guides my hand up to my left eye. The ice-cold feeling on top of the eye's rawness sends a chill throughout my body.

"What happened?" I ask, my daze finally clearing up.

"Jamie dragged you in here unconscious. Said you ran into a doorknob," Ms. Markham told me as she jotted down on a clipboard. "First time she brought someone here personally, I think."

"Heh," I scoff at the thought knowing better. The door creaks open and Gumball and Darwin pop in cautiously. I think seeing me with the pack over my eye was uneasy for Gumball.

"Is that how I looked after Tina chased me into a doorknob a while back?" he said with a grimace.

"Feels like it," I begin, "but I think my eye actually sunk into the back of my head." I blink the head pressure away and began seeing spots. I groan as I move to get off the cot, stopping when Ms. Markham places a hand on my shoulder.

"I'm going to need you to stay for a while longer," she says as I sit back down, "need to make sure you don't have a concussion."

"You want your sweater back?" I ask Gumball, "because I want my shirts back."

"Oh! Yeah sure," he says as he takes the shirts off, "been nice wearing something other than the sweater."

We swap our clothes back, me dealing with the pain in my head as well. The light-headed feeling along with the throbbing pain agitated me to no end.

"Not gonna ask how I'm doing?" I ask Gumball and Darwin, mildly annoyed that they didn't actually ask.

"You told us how you were doing," Darwin speaks up looking confused.

"No," I retorted, "I compared what I felt with what happened to what Gumball went through."

"I guess..." Darwin said somewhat awkwardly. The mood felt as heavy as Tina's father after that and an awkward silence spread throughout the room.

I just stare straight ahead letting everything happen around me. Gumball began reminiscing with Darwin about their previous romps and injuries before the bell rings and they head back to class. Ms. Markham asks me various questions about my well-being that I answer on auto-pilot. I try to think back to my confrontation with Jamie. I wonder why I said what I said and why that stopped her, temporarily, from throttling me.

"Is the newborn in here?" I hear someone say from the outside of the nurse's office door. The door creaks open and I look over to see Eddy peeking in.

"Why are you...?" I begin, but he interrupts answering.

"Just trying some nicknames for you. Nothing works well."

"Not that. Why are you here?" I re-ask.

"Did you get into another fight?" Ms Markham asks him. Eddy only shrugs with mild smirk then walks up to me on the cot. He sits next to me, in my temporary blind spot; I notice one of his hands have some bruising around his knuckles. Ms. Markham comes over and checks his hands immediately.

"You need to stop getting into fights," she says to Eddy, "I'm a doctor not a corner man."

"But you mend my wounds so well!" Eddy says with mock swooning.

"This keeps up you might end up in jail," she retorts.

"Where I might spend 8 years doing hard labor," Eddy shoots back, "then get hired by a school, and end up in a relationship with the school nurse."

Ms. Markham just stares daggers into Eddy and applies some pressure on his hand bruise. She smirks a bit as he takes a sharp inhale and gives him a small baggy of ice for the bruise, "That shouldn't be a goal of yours."

"I know..." Eddy remarks dejectedly. He takes the baggy and pulls my goggles from his pocket. He hands them to me and I take 'em with my free hand.

"Where's Bryce?" I ask.

"Plotting I guess," he said with a 'meh' look, "think Julius Caesar and the Aegean Sea pirates."

I shiver at the thought, so I don't ask for more info. As he leaves Ms. Markham has me take the bag of peas off my eye to check the swelling. She tells me that it's going down and I could possibly go to class if I didn't want to call my parents.

'Parents? Is that what they are to me?'

I tell her I'll be fine and head off to class with a small baggy of ice in place of the peas. I place the baggy in my left side of my goggles and gingerly place it over my eyes. As head down the empty halls of I feel the condensation from the baggy seep into the divot of the goggles. Luckily it doesn't pool into the right side.

'Are we family?'

I stop in my tracks.

'Really though. They accepted me, right? But what am I to them? Brother? Son? Some adopted kid from off the street? They don't know me. I don't even know me. I already found out that I don't feel the same way Gumball does. Preferences differ, so does my body's reactions to things. I'm a Watterson in name only.'

I feel a shortness of breath, as though I'm hyperventilating. My palms feel clammy and a chill rolls throughout my entire body; I even feel it extend to the ends of my fur. My heart beats harder and faster and I hear the beating in my head as it gets louder and louder. I begin curling up and shivering, my vision tunneling. My breathing quickens even more and more and more until...

"Just breath, dude," hear in my ear as I feel someone embrace me from behind, "Breath slowly. In *inhales*... and out *exhales*..."

I try to match their breathing, slowing mine down. While it's still shaky my breathing stabilizes. I realize I'm gripping my claws into one of the reddish arms holding me. I retract them and I a sigh of relief responds as the arms themselves from me. I turn to see Bryce grimacing as he rubs his forearm tenderly.

"OH MY! I'M SO SORRY!" I nearly scream as I get up to tend to him. He just stops me by putting a hand on my shoulder. He looks at me with a comforting smile, reaches into his pocket and pulls out a tissue. He gives it to me and motions to my right cheek. I raise the tissue to my left cheek seeing as water might have leaked from under my goggles, but Bryce shakes his head and points to me right cheek. I then notice that something streamed down my face from under the right side of my goggles. I had been crying.

"Didn't know that hit hurt you that much," Bryce said with a worried face.

"It wasn't..." I began to say sobbing. His hand on my shoulder gripped a bit tighter.

"I know," he said with knowing smile before he hugged me tight, "I know."

I looked off over his shoulder for a bit as my sobbing fit faded and I blink the tears welling up away.

~Gumball's Perspective~

"Is he doing alright?" Penny asks me. Darwin and I had just gotten back from the infirmary and sat in our seats.

"I... don't know," I say just realizing, "the first thing I asked him referred to myself." I looked my desk racking my brain about why I did.

'I know that I'm pretty oblivious of a lot and I do have some slight narcissism, but he just got hurt. I did not show any care for him, why?'

I resolved to apologize to him when returned to class. I look up to begin paying attention to the class as it goes on. I look to Penny, who looks uneasy, and give her a reassuring smile. I look towards Jamie, who has her head lowered as though she's ashamed of something. Looking towards Darwin, who is having what seems to be a serious conversation with Carrie about a weird bottle she has. Now I just need to wait until Rick returns to class. Minutes go by and no sign of Rick. 45 minutes since I sat down and still no Rick. I look at the clock; one and a half hours left until schools over. I begin to worry.

'Is he alright? Did he have an accident on the way back? I shouldn't have just left him like that!'

There came a knocking on the classroom door snapping me back from my worried thoughts. Ms. Simian looks annoyed and screeched for the person to come in. Once the door fully opened I felt deflated as it wasn't Rick, but the rouge fox boy we met during lunch, Bryce.

"What is it!?" Ms. Simian demanded. Bryce looked surprised at her overall unpleasantness. He blinked before heading to her desk with a note. He gave her the note and promptly left, but not before giving me a nod.

"Who was that?" Penny asks quietly.

"Rick's friend, Bryce," I answer. Ms. Simian huffs as she puts the note down as she finishes reading it.

"Well he had a short school day," I hear her mutter.

'Rick?'

~Nikolai's Perspective~

~1 hour and 15 minutes ago~

Jamie is acting somewhat sheepishly as she jostles Rick in an effort to wake him up after knocking him out. She looked around with a slight worry that no one has actually seen before. She grabbed his legs and stomped off dragging him elsewhere.

"You can come out now," I say to hidden overseer. From within a locker the ghost girl phases out. Her look had a hint of apprehensiveness behind an uncaring facade.

"Who are you?" She asks with a glare.

"Guess," I tell her.

'It makes sense, now that I think about it. I'm "technically" a spirit, so her being able to see me just."

"No games," she has a callousness to her words that through me off.

"Whoa! Never actually seen you go straight up nasty before."

"We've met?" She cocks her head. My guess is that she might be thinking back to where we might have met.

"Yeah," I answer, "I used to go around with a popped collar, purple sunglasses, and rode a skateboard. I called myself Zac back then..."

"Wait," she stops me, "wasn't that just Gumball?"

"Well yes, but actually no," I snark.

'Why'd I say it like that?'

"Then why are you here?" she continues interrogating, "Are you planning to haunt Gumball and his family?"

"Not necessarily," I begin to explain, "Can't interact with anything like you can." I then demonstrate by trying to open a locker, but no matter what I always phase through it. She scrutinizes my every movement with her silent stare/glare and I begin to feel uncomfortable.

"I see you've been hanging around Rick," she says after a heavy silence, "you going posses him next?"

"Why would I?" I say taken back, "He's helping me anyway."

Her eyes go big at my comment then narrows, "What do you mean 'help'?"

Before I can answer she pulls small bottle from behind her and bellows, "Hoc Continent Entitatem, Donec Ulterius Observate!"

A continuous gust of wind blows around us. The lockers fly open and close putting their contents on the ground while loose papers flutter about. The wind picks up and begins pushing and pulling me. As it gets stronger and stronger I see where it's trying to take me, the bottle. I feel nothing, but terror and try to fly, run, and force my way through the current. I make no progress and continue to be pulled towards the bottle.

I let out a panicked scream as I get pulled into the bottle before it goes dark.

No snark. no jokes. Please give me your feedback.