Curses, Felix! || Merlin & Fix-it Felix
The wand began falling apart, pixel by pixel. Then, all the game’s assets became a jumble. Corners of windows became doors. Letters and numbers on black background replaced much of the walls. Felix himself lost any distinguishable features. His nose blurred and turned green and his hat flickered to the right of his head.
Merlin had seen glitches before, here and there. They were an unsettling reminder that the world they resided in was an ephemeral human creation. But this, this was what some called a “game breaking” glitch. He had no idea what would happen to a digitized human body. Maybe he would be booted out. Maybe worse.
He felt himself being pulled away violently, as if by a storm. His hands were no longer his hands. His body no longer in his control at all. If there was a way to weather this storm, to control a glitch, he had not the knowledge or abilities to do it. All he could do, then, was let the chaos take him until the game ceased functioning or reset itself.
Aside from pieces of the Nicelanders and the building from the Fix It Felix Jr. game, other unfamiliar assets began popping up. High-res characters and distorted 3D images. At the center of the maelstrom, he almost thought he saw his wand and tried to reach out to it. But then Pac-Man floated past, munching glitches and leaving other glitches behind.
"Pac-Man. Can you help me get to my wand?" Merlin reached out what could have been a hand or could have been a rifle barrel. He touched the iconic yellow ball and everything went black for a moment.
* * *
He and Felix were sitting in a hallway with white dots and blue walls.
"Where are we?" he asked. "Another game?"
Merlin’s question was soon answered when around the corner came a red pixelated ghost and the ever-growing sound of “wakka wakka wakka.”
"Felix, run. Run!"
The moment Felix was spat back out into a hallway that actually looked like a hallway and not the terrifying insides of a snake mixed with a kaleidoscope, Felix heaved a humongous gasp and flailed at Merlin, jumping up into his friend's arms like a scared cat.
"What happened!?" he yelped, half-burying himself into Merlin's robes. "I've never glitched while dying before! We died, didn't we!? ...AH!"
Felix sat back a bit, slapping both hands over his nose -- and was calmed for just a moment to find that it was back on his face again, and if he crossed his eyes down, he could see that it was no longer green like a terrifying glitched pickle.
With that, he deflated miserably into Merlin's beard.
"I'm so sorry! I don't know what I did wrong," he said, heart still pounding from the glitch -- but then he heard the familiar music and wakka-wakka-wakka of their surroundings. Felix glanced over his shoulder and breathed a sigh of relief at the oncoming ghost.
"Oh good, Blinky, you're back in one piece, too! See, the pixels in my eyes scattered and I saw Pacman eating glitches from about ten different angles, and I wasn't sure if he was the broken one, or me!" Felix laughed loudly, shaken, but stopped as the ghost kept onward, and a bizarre blue glitch wobbled through its code.
"Uh... Blinky? Maybe we should settle down a minute for a breather? You won't get any extra points for gobbling up Merlin and me, so-- BLINKY, NO!"
Suddenly finding Merlin's advice to run to be very sound, Felix flailed up and onto his own feet again, pushing Merlin onward down the corridor to get them both moving.
"MERLIIIIN!" Felix cried, picking up speed. "It's like he doesn't recognize me! We have rootbeers at tappers together every other week! Wh-What's happening...!?"
