Before the Spirits

It should come as no surprise really that a face that appears in brick walls would use one of those old cell phones that were the size of a brick. When he tossed it down, the heavy telephone smashed down on Tut-Tut’s head, sending up a cloud of sand and dust as it squished the mummified dodo’s head in. It did not have the kind of impact of a skull cracking though, more like a blanket with a lot of air under it being pressed down. The temporary time spirit staggered a bit… and then staggered a bit again, and again, and again. An almost infinite time loop of staggering occurs, but soon the little guy’s lights are out, and the confused attempts at undoing the damage to his head cease.

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"WAKE UP TIME SPIRIT"

The eyes of the tiny mummy crack open, light flooding in and forcing him to shut them again. It was not the sterile light of electricity, nor was it the dim glow of a torch. It was a light as brilliant as a sun, and for all rights it should have blinded him, and had he been a mere mortal, he probably would have been.

Tut-Tut ventures to open his eyes again, and in doing so sees the source of the glow. He was no longer in the labyrinth with WALL!! and Meat Boy, but the area around him still had the ancient architecture one would expect from a ruin. However, this place had glowing marble columns and a ceiling that swirled into the cosmos. Around the perimeter of the room were many faces, very few familiar to the little mummy but their descriptions from his employer filling in the blanks. These were the Spirits. A living sewer pipe belched waste near to him, it's grotesque body somehow odorless in these halls. A being made of storms and lightning flickered in and out of view as its body flashed with brilliant light. Behind him, Tut-Tut could make out the Destroyers: strange titan like beings who serve as the fear that hangs over any spirit's head if they fail to do their job. The Time Destroyer was present this day.

As his eyes grew more accustomed to the light, he made out the spirit that was floating next to him, a face quite familiar to him. The Death Spirit: Phantomon. No doubt the Digimon had brought him here following his death in the arena, but the ghost seemed to be giving Tut-Tut no special treatment. Phantomon would not even look at the mummy as it scrambled to its feet, but when Tut-Tut finally looked towards the front of the room, he saw why.

Tut-Tut had only heard his voice once before, so he could not recognize it at first. The Spirits that control the universe were beings of immense power, and although the Destroyers were created to keep them in line, there had to be someone to regulate the Spirits and create Destroyers. At the front of the room stood a beast on a thousand legs, with a cobra like body that stretched far into the cosmic ceiling. On its frill was a thousand faces, and hundreds of them were staring directly at the tiny Time Spirit.

Tut-Tut fell backwards from shock, but Phantomon's arm was quick to catch him. The mummy trembled, the sight of the Ultra Spirit overwhelming the insignificant little creature that stood before it. When the Ultra Spirit spoke, five hundred mouths bellowed forth in unison, sending shivers down even the most hardened Spirit's spines.

"TIME SPIRIT, YOU CONTINUE TO DISAPPOINT."

Tut-Tut sputtered to try and respond, but he was drowned out by more of the Ultra Spirit's bellowing.

"YOU FAIL TO MAINTAIN THE TIMELINE. YOU DIE WITH NO PLANS FOR REVIVAL. THE DEATH SPIRIT CANNOT FERRY YOU BACK WITHOUT REASON, TIME SPIRIT."

Tut-Tut's bandages are soaked as he is brought to tears. The words pain him to hear both physically and emotionally, and standing behind him was the Time Destroyer, a being specifically made to eradicate spirits from existence if they fail to do their job or step out of line. The Ultra Spirit continued on as if it could not see Tut-Tut's distress.

"YOUR PREDECESSOR SEEMED FOOLISH TO PASS ON HIS POWER TO YOU...

BUT WE CAN SEE POTENTIAL IN YOU."

The words barely registered in Tut-Tut's mind, and even when they did, he could not collect himself. A second chance?

"YOU ARE MORE EFFICIENT THAN YOUR PREDECESSOR, BUT LACK HIS WILLINGNESS TO DO WHAT MUST BE DONE. YOU MUST BE WILLING TO DUE WHATEVER IT TAKES TO PRESERVE THE TIMELINE, TIME SPIRIT. PROVE YOUR WORTH. WE DO NOT OFTEN GIVE SECOND CHANCES, AND YOU KNOW WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF YOU FAIL."

The Time Destroyer shifts its weight behind Tut-Tut, causing the scared mummy to fall forward. He quickly bows repeatedly to the Ultra Spirit, frantically thanking it between mournful gasps. Tut-Tut would be spared, but the uneasy Time Spirit could no longer ignore the more brutal aspects of keeping the timeline in check. Phantomon payed his respects to the Ultra Spirit and dragged the crying mummy away, the strange council of Spirits disappearing behind him. As they floated through the nothingness, Phantomon spoke without looking at the mummy as it gradually calmed down.

"Killing is not easy Tut-Tut, and I cannot say it will get easier the more you do it. But death is necessary. You can get others to do it for you, but in the end, you must keep the timeline safe, no matter what it takes. If you fail to make use of the second chance the Ultra Spirit granted you, the Time Destroyer will be the least of your worries."

"I...I... I don't want to be Time Spirit anymore. I'm giving it back to Jumpropeman..."

"The only reason the Ultra Spirit spared you is because he prefers you to Jumpropeman. I would not risk angering it by giving the Jingle Specter back its powers. Besides, I am sure it will be easier for you now. That computer Jumpropeman had made for you should help."

"I don't know Phantomon... This is bigger than I ever thought... How do you do it?"

"With a hollow heart Tut-Tut... with a hollow heart."

Tut-Tut did not have time to ask Phantomon what he meant. A puttering RV bobbed into view in front of them, and they floated through the side of it, avoiding even Jumpropeman's detection. The body of the mummy was placed on a table, in surprisingly good condition for having been dead for almost 6 months.

"Goodbye Tut-Tut, and remember, you are not alone."

Phantomon lets go of Tut-Tut, and the mummy swirls back into his corpse, his mind going blank as it ties back with the corporeal brain and body...

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"Alright Sneferu, I dig Mummy's Curses as much as you, but as cool as it is to rapidly age a guy, that's when you cross the line into my domain."

Voices. He hadn't heard voices in years. He hadn't heard in years either. Something was going on, but trapped in his sarcophagus, he could not make out more than just the muffled sounds of some sort of conflict. Pained groans came from somewhere, and a the sound of a bell ringing was shrill and painful even behind the door of the coffin. After the bell echoed, the sounds of the groans ceased, punctuated by what sounded like crumbling.

"We're done here. We need to do something about these Egyptians, Hatch-o-Hatch, they are far too close to the Sands of Time and I am tired of getting called out here to quell their mischief."

A different voice started this time, a rather high pitch, an accented one with an air of false sophistication.

"Do not worry sir, I can get right on that."

"Yeah, sure buddy, just like you were going to get on debugging the Tester unit and handling the mercenary salaries."

The high-pitched voice grunts in disapproval, but after an exasperated sigh from the first voice, they seem to both disappear. Still locked within his sarcophagus, he had no idea what had just transpired, or why he had awoken, but suddenly, his coffin was lifted up and jostled around. He let out a peep of terror, his mouth working for the first time in centuries. Suddenly, the sarcophagus clattered to the ground, and his body spilled out.

The light in the tomb was dim, and he had no idea what was going on in it. He saw the crumpled body of what had once been Sneferu, but before he could figure out what happened, a burlap sack was thrown over his head. He began squawking, but his vocalizations slowly shifted into words.

"HELP! HELP!" He had never spoken before, but the words seemed to come naturally to him. His thoughts were no longer locked in his head, and he was able to freely speak them for all to hear. Right now, it seemed like only one person was there to hear them, and he was clearly not someone who wished to help him.

The thing trying to put a burlap sack over his head was not human or animal. It's body had the shape and appearance of an overweight soft-boiled egg, and it was wrapped in a vest with around a hundred pockets. Peering out of these pockets were snakes of all kinds, many hissing as their keeper struggled to capture the loud mummy. The sack had in it already many items of gold and silver, and the bespectacled face of the strange egg man was curled in a nervous and angry scowl. The urgency of his motions was explained when a silvery blue ghost came through the wall of the tomb.

"Hatch-o-Hatch what's the hold- Damnit Hatch!" The ghost rang its bell, and suddenly time stopped around the egg creature. "I can't take you anywhere... You greedy little egg."

Not waiting to see what was going on, he scrambled away again, stumbling as it found its legs wrapped into strange nubs. It fluttered what were once it wings, but now that were contorted into strange arms. He had no idea what was happening, but his running caught the eye of the ghost.

"Hey little fella, look at you! You're the funkiest mummy I've ever seen. You supposed to be some kind of bird?"

"I'm a... a dodo." He says, still unused to the ability to speak.

"Look at that, old Sneferu's Curse gave his menagerie some of his magic. Well I got some bad news dodo, but your master is history, or I guess, history again. Double dead, if you will. And if you hadn't noticed, you're dead too."

He looked down at his body, and it all began to click. Sitting down in a way his old body never could, he began to take it all in, and he started crying.

"Oh geeze, uh... Didn't mean to hit you with it like that... Look, Dodo, uh... How 'bout we get you out of this dump? I think I know what will cheer you up (after I read up on Egypt and Dodos of course...)."

The ghost lifted him up, and was prepared to ring his bell when he spared a look back at the frozen body of the egg man.

"Consider this your pink slip, Hatch-o-Hatch." Time unfroze around the egg as the ghost teleported away with the Dodo, and in the darkness of the tomb, Hatch-o-Hatch realized where his greed and laziness had got him...

The dodo had no idea what was going on around him, but he was taking it surprisingly well considering. The ghost noticed it, surprised at how quickly it was calming down and growing accustomed to its strange new situation.

"Got a name there, Dodo?" it asked.

He pondered for a minute, but nothing came to mind. He shook his head no, unable to remember much of his life before death. He was still a bit surprised he was dead in the first place.

"Well, I'm gonna call you... Tut-Tut. It's like dodo, but with a mummy sorta name. Sound good?"

Tut-Tut nodded. He wasn't paying much attention anyway, instead looking at the strange swirling time floe around him as they traveled to their destination.

"Good! Well I'm the Jingle Specter, or you can call me Jumpropeman. Either works, but one certainly sounds better, right? I'm a Time Spirit, I go around fixing time and stuff. Your owner Sneferu was tampering with it while using his magic to curse tomb raiders, so I had to fix him up. Didn't expect his animals to be alive again too."

Jumpropeman continued talking, seemingly happy to have found a new person to listen to him. Tut-Tut's willingness to listen to JRM's ranting would prove to be his greatest asset, for as Jumpropeman went through new candidates for assistants after ditching Hatch-o-Hatch, he always found himself thinking aloud towards the little mummy. Tut-Tut slowly grew into the role as assistant, and despite his unease with his mummified body and the ever present shock of the world of being a Time Spirit's assistant, Tut-Tut proved to be the perfect anchor to JRM's wildness.

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"Wake up Tut-Tut."

The eyes of the tiny mummy crack open, light flooding in and forcing him to shut them again. This time it was the sterile light of electricity, and the faint shadow of a memory floats away from his mind as he leaves his dreams and reenters our world. When his eyes opened, he was greeted by three huge smiles: the near toothless and slightly slanted grin of Whitey, the long green bar of a grin of Mr. Chips, and the biggest of all: Jumpropeman's massive black smile. As soon as the mummy's eyes were open, he was scooped up in a hug by the Jingle Specter.

"TUT-TUT'S BACK BABY!"

The three all begin celebrating and cheering, with Tut-Tut still trying to adjust his mind to the setting. He was alive again, and back with his friends. In the back of his mind the Ultra Spirit's order and Phantomon's words still echoed, but as Jumpropeman pulled him over to some rather old Ful Medames and tea, Tut-Tut's mind was pulled back to reality.

When Jumpropeman spoke, it seemed to echo an earlier time.

"Eat up there buddy, let's try and forget all that bad stuff with some treats!"

He couldn't eat it that first time all those years ago, and he still couldn't it now, but Tut-Tut knew what it meant. The mummy pulled JRM in for a hug, tearing up once more, just happy to be back and alive again.