Chapter Text
I woke up feeling cold.
I slowly opened my eyes to find myself still in the Anti-Void, AKA the place where I fell asleep. I got up from the freezing 'ground' of the Anti-Void. 'Why is it freezing? The Anti-Void shouldn't have a temperature.' The voices were freaking out in the back of my mind, but I managed to tune them out to figure out why it was so cold.
I swiped my hand across the air and created a portal to my friend's, Nightmare's, mansion. I put my hand through the portal to test the mansion's temperature. It was also freezing. Something was definitely wrong since usually, the place was burning down because of how hot it was in the AU it was located in.
I pulled my hand out and closed the portal with a similar hand movement, I had done before. I opened another portal, this time to the Doodlesphere. I went through and shut the portal behind me. I opened up the code of the Doodlesphere. Everything was normal. I found myself frustrated about not being able to find anything wrong with the code.
"Error..?" A quiet voice caused me to shriek and close the wall of code in a panic. I quickly turned around to face whoever scared me. It was Ink, unsurprisingly. He had the shawl he usually wears when visiting cold AUs on him and his arms wrapped around himself tightly. He looked like he had been in the cold much longer than I had.
"Pfft. Sorry for scaring you, didn't mean to." He apologized softly.
"Yeah sure." I scoffed at him, barely believing him.
"So uh, any idea why the Multiverse is freezing?" I questioned him, kind of already suspecting it had something to do with him because... well, most of the time everything odd was Ink's fault.
"Nope, no idea why. I was trying to search for you in the Anti-Void, but it was far too cold for me." He explained, his voice still strangely quiet. For him anyway.
Just then I noticed that his eye lights were duller than usual.
"Your eye lights are dull."
"Huh?" He carefully lifted his left hand to where his eye sockets were, before swiftly pulling it down and tugging at his sash to see the paints attached to it better. He looked at it for a moment before he let out a small 'Oh'. Realization crossed his eye lights as he let go of his sash and let it fall back into its original place.
He looked back up at me and shrugged slightly.
"My vials are frozen."
I only managed to blink at him before something wrapped around my hand and tugged me backward. I took a few steps back from the sudden pull, trying to keep myself balanced. I crashed against something cold and slimy. I froze for a moment because of the shock of someone touching me. I looked up to see Nightmare, barely actually seeing him because of the glitched clouding my eyes. He was glaring straight at Ink. "Hey?" I asked to get his attention. He looked down at me with a face of question, but he still held some of the glare.
"I don't think Ink did this." I stated, guessing he was already blaming Ink for this. They didn't have the best 'friendship'. He gave a slight glance at Ink before letting his tentacle unwrap itself from my wrist. I let out a breath of relief as he wasn't touching me anymore.
"Then who do you think did it?" Nightmare questioned me with an annoyed expression.
"Uh, I mean, it could just be the Multiverse's own doing?" I nervously shrugged as I answered.
He let out a dramatic sigh. Now that I looked at him more, I noticed he had the scarf I knit for him years ago, on. His tentacles were swaying behind him slower than usual and some of them had icicles stuck on them.
"What if something happened to the Multiverse's own code?" Ink suddenly asked. I looked at him and he looked like he was trying hard to ignore Nightmare's harsh glares. I hummed quietly as I swiped up the Multiverse's code and started scrolling through it, it took minutes to find the problem, but at least I found it finally. 'Ink was right.' I thought as I looked at the Multiverse's barrier code. It was slightly shattered and that was probably what messed up the temperature.
"You were correct. The barrier code is broken." I told them as I began to fix the code. "Wait what-" I heard Ink and Nightmare exclaim in unison. They both rushed over to the code I was inspecting.
"Can you tell what or who caused it?" Nightmare asked as he peeked over my shoulder to look at the code that's nonsense to him.
"I wish." I laughed. It honestly would help a lot if codes could tell you what or who caused it to change. it somewhat works in AUs, but we were literally talking about the entire Multiverse's code, it would take years to figure out how to even navigate the Multiverse's code somewhat okay.
I finally turned my attention to the two that had been standing behind my back, only to find them arguing about something presumably unimportant. "Hey, you two? I can't fix this." The two turned to me with different expressions. Nightmare looked pissed and Ink almost hopeless.
Before any of us could say anything else, a portal suddenly appeared in between us. Dream came through it in a flash. He looked around, seeming to be panicking, but as he noticed us his expression changed from worry to confusion.
"Hi, Dream." Ink greeted him with a timid smile.
"What did you do?" Dream asked narrowing his eyes at Ink.
"Wait, nevermind... how did you do it?" Dream corrected himself quickly.
"It wasn't Ink's fault, believe it or not." I told him. Dream looked at me in almost disbelief... wow, what a great friend he is.
"Yeah, uh, something broke the barrier of the Multiverse." After saying that Dream's expression changed to confusion. 'Right, he knows little to nothing about the Multiverse...'
"Uh, to clear that up, basically imagine a wall surrounding the Multiverse that's keeping all the warm air in, that's the thing that's broken." Ink did some hand gestures with that sentence to help Dream understand what we were talking about better.
There were 2 'Oh's. I turned to Nightmare who apparently just realized what we've been talking about for the past.... half an hour maybe?
"Are you serious?" I asked Nightmare as he shrugged at me.
"How do we fix that?" Dream asked.
"No idea." I stayed silent for a bit before continuing.
"But we could probably ask Sci to help us?"
"Yes, that's a great idea!" Ink exclaimed, suddenly getting all his energy and positivity back; making me and Nightmare jump slightly. He quickly pulled his paintbrush off his back and made a portal. Dream jumped in without question as did Nightmare. I gave Ink a hesitant look before carefully going through.