Tick Tick Tick
A massive floating clock with indecipherable symbols ticked above me. With each tick, a pulse of strange light was released into this place of darkness, illuminating the wide, twisting hall I was in. For some reason, I couldn't take my eyes away from the clock, and I forgot why I was here in the first place.
'Wait? Why am I here? Last I remember I was sitting on my couch watching SpongeBob, what the hell is thi—'
"Bravo! It took you 400 years to escape the influence of the clock. That's the smallest amount of time we've had so far! The last guy who managed to impress me took 9,561 years to escape. You're the fastest guy I've seen so far!" A jolly voice erupted from below the clock. Startled, I tore my gaze away from it and saw a grinning man in a white suit, his face painted white and red like a joker in a deck of cards.
"Who the hell are you? And where am I?" I asked, watching as the weird joker pulled out three dice, rolling them between his fingers before he looked at me and opened his red-painted mouth.
"Always straight to business, eh? You take one look at lil ol' me and instead of asking my name and how my day is, you're worried about yourself. Humans really are selfish creatures." He spoke, ignoring my question while playing with the dice, throwing them into the air and doing tricks with them.
A spike of irritation flowed through me watching this scene, and before I could speak, the Joker suddenly stopped, catching all of his dice mid-air, and he began to walk towards me.
"I am the Fate Joker, one of the three Jokers serving directly under the Supreme Being. Now, you likely don't know what any of this means, but if you can do the task of the Supreme Being, you will. Now, let me jump into my storytelling mode." He stopped right in front of me, and an unpacked deck of cards floated out of his pocket.
The cards began to shuffle themselves, and soon spat out five cards that stopped mid-air right in front of my face, each faced away from me. Soon, the first card to my left turned around, and I saw an image of a colossal being floating in space. The picture began to move.
"This right here is the Supreme Being before he created alternate universes. You see, a long time ago the Supreme Being escaped his egg amongst his brethren and fought for control over the original universe. He was the last one standing, and used their bodies as nourishment to create the Divine Tree. The Divine Tree created infinite replicas of the original universe, and therefore infinite possibilities." The jester explained, as the colossal being on the card stretched his hand and a tree made of white light appeared, sending ripples across space.
"Didn't you say I would learn all this soon? Can you skip the storytime and just tell me what the fuck is going on here?!" I demanded, tired of the Joker's shenanigans. He frowned at this, and instantly the cards vanished.
"You're right, though I'm surprised you don't want to learn about the secrets of the cosmos. Ahem, anyways, you are here because the Supreme Being occasionally gets bored and has us Jokers scour Yggdrasil to find mortals with enough potential to participate in the Cosmic Tournament. Mortals with enough potential are found and tossed into some anime world, and if they can break their world's limits they are given the opportunity to participate." The Joker revealed, taking out his three dice again.
"Wait a minute, so you're saying I am here for some cosmic shithead's UFC fight?!" I shouted, enraged.
Smack
My head was smacked to the left, and pain erupted across my cheek. 'Did he just—'
"Yes, I did. Now let me continue. You can choose to reject or accept this offer if you complete the task, though if you do complete it you will be incredibly bored, as no one could challenge you in your verse. Also, due to the laws of Yggdrasil, you wouldn't even be able to gather enough energy to breach into another anime, though I'd be surprised if you could."
The Joker abruptly clapped in the middle of his speech.
"Anyways, as the Fate Joker I can peer into the fate of all beings and determine whether or not they have potential for this challenge, and it seems you do." The Joker explained, grabbing my hand and stuffing the three dice into it.
"Roll the three dice of infinity, and your path will be laid out before you." The Joker whispered with a strange glint in his eye
Deciding to just accept everything that was happening to me, I took a deep breath, blew into the dice, and after a few quick shakes I rolled them onto the floor.
The Joker and I watched as the dice shifted into black marbles and began rolling on the ground. Soon, the marbles stopped and shifted back into dice, with symbols that I couldn't decipher.
"Huh, your world is Jujutsu Kaisen… the Heian era! Hahahahah, oh you're fucked—wait, that sounds like a badass innate technique: Cursed Modulation. Let's see, what can it do… yeah, it's pretty good, especially if you can overcome the cursed energy limitations. Oh, it seems you're going to be a sorcerer too, not a cursed spirit." The Joker mumbled to himself, grinning, before snapping his fingers.
The hall suddenly stopped its twisting, and I fell on the floor.
"What the fu—" Before I could finish, the Joker waved at me and I blacked out.
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Tick Tick Tick
"Oh, hey there, it seems that things are gonna get interesting, but I still haven't finished my storytelling. Do you guys want to hear the rest?" The Joker spoke in the twisting hall, staring directly into space. Hearing no response, he shrugged his shoulders, sat down, and peered into the floor, observing the protagonist of this story.