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• he isn’t dead

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Gyro was pretty damn sure he died.

Like, not even a little unsure.

We’re talking 110% certified, absolutely punched-his-ticket kind of dead. The kind of dead where you start composing your own elegy in your head as the lights fade.

He remembered it vividly, too.

The Steel Ball missed. That crucial, make-it-or-break-it spin just didn’t hit right.

And then: boom.

A hole clean through his chest, like someone just deleted a part of him. Blood, pain, darkness. The whole nine yards.

So imagine his confusion when he felt something soft under him. Like… pillows? A bed? That couldn’t be right.

Heaven wasn’t supposed to have upholstery, was it?

Why could he hear?

Why could he feel?

Why was his face squished into something vaguely cotton-scented?

He was supposed to be dead, goddammit!

His eyelids creaked open, heavy like concrete. The world was a blur, a hazy watercolor painting dipped in too much water.

Blinking didn’t help. His vision just fizzled, like a TV that couldn’t quite find the channel. His chest rose, slowly. Painfully. Every breath felt like dragging sandpaper through his lungs.

He tried to move, even just a twitch of a finger, but his body responded with a firm no.

It was all leaden limbs and radio silence.

He lay there, limp, quietly stewing in a mix of bone-deep fatigue and what the hell is happening?

A groan tried to escape him, but even that got stuck halfway.

And then a voice.

Something in his brain immediately shifted. Like a stuck record finally skipping to the chorus.

A voice.

A familiar voice.