"A council of Zoeys."

Gadget's grin widened. "Yeah! I mean, just think about it! Imagine just how fun it'd be to meet so many different versions of yourself! There's you and me already, obviously, and Potato Zoey over there--" she gestured at the trembling incarnation of herself still clutching to a small sky shard. "--Heck, we could turn this whole void place into our own little world!"

Zoey backed away a little. "Gadget..."

"Hey, don't Gadget me, you're the one that wanted to take a peek in her world in the first place! Aaaaanyhoo, like I was saying before, what if this whole void plane place really is something that exists just for us? It'd explain why I'm the only one that's apparently trapped in here, wouldn't it?"

"Gadget!"

"Ooh, I've got so much to ask you as well, Potato Zoey! I already told Lost Zoey next to you about how I'm pretty sure that you're the first version of us to ever exist. How does it feel knowing that?"

Potato Zoey quivered. "I-I shouldn't have come here. I wanna go back!"

"And we'll get you back," Zoey reached for her counterpart's hand. "Just follow after me, alright?"

"Right."

"Doesn't really answer the question, but fiiiine," Gadget waltzed past the two. "Feel free to come back anytime! Bring your friends too, maybe!"

Potato Zoey glanced at Gadget, then at her... well, other counterpart. The one currently guiding the movements of her hand.

"It's a sort of sawing motion, usually," Zoey mimicked the full movements of the blade with her free hand. "You emerged from more or less this exact spot, right?"

"Yeah..."

"Then you should come out right where you left once you're through," Zoey released Potato Zoey's hands. "Try it."

Potato Zoey stuck out her tongue, making short, sawing motions with the shard in her hands until a small tear opened up.

"There you go, just widen it a little bit more and you're home free!"

Zoey stood back, watching Potato Zoey cut her way back into her home universe. She pulled the opening shut as soon as her counterpart's foot disappeared through.

"Okay, Gadget, we need to talk."

Author's Note

idk. this was suggested during an IRL workshopping session in my creative writing class by my professor. he latched onto how Void Gadget was pushing surprisingly hard for the idea of "inviting" more Zoeys into the void once she fell even further down the rabbithole of realizing that she and every other version of Zoey may or may not be nothing more than a character--a literary construct made purely for the sake of playing out a story.

this is probably by far the messiest and least-complete Project Emphenom chapter simply because I really don't have any ideas at the moment of how I'd characterize Void Gadget going off the deep end while still keeping her personality consistent.

the base concept of this was that Gadget, through the years of loneliness she'd spent isolated in the void all alone, and only really exacerbated by the combination of realizing the potential implications of her very existence alongside (maybe) getting bonked in the head, decides that it'd be an excellent idea to actually build out this 'council of Zoeys' that she'd previously mentioned. maybe, she'd even learn the ability to manipulate, or perhaps even steal the memories of her fellow Zoey incarnations, keeping them for herself or something. i legitimately have no idea where this could go or how it could get there at the moment. maybe with time it might end up being the natural path taken in a full story, maybe this just ends up being nothing more than an oddball of an experimental chapter.

tl;dr: this is an experiment within an experiment, as the idea of Void Gadget turning out to be a surprise antagonist is still interesting even if it's pretty out-there as far as ideas go. this chapter canonically takes place immediately after PE#10.