EtchJetty
I did that thing that one time!
- Location
- USA
Armsmaster's long gone, man. He's Defiant now, and he's too busy to deal with a random Ward from his old city. Probably.
I Prefer Chocolate (Worm/Vanilla Minecraft SI)
ScottotheUnwise
Verified Crack (fic) Dealer
- Location
- Mulberry, Fl
Ah. Oops. Diving from one fic to another.
But then again, he (SI) is familiar with Worm and may have a lapse and ask anyway. Would be terribly funny nonetheless. Dragon still helps out with infrastructure yes? Might pick up the question.
- Location
- Seattle, Washington, USA
Yeah, but odds are he'd still answer a tech question if someone asked, especially if it pertained to making tech more efficient at something.
Chapter 7 - A Whole New World
EtchJetty
I did that thing that one time!
- Location
- USA
At about 7:30 the next morning, after a breakfast that didn't need to be recorded here, I logged back into Brockton Bay. The door to the room my avatar had spent the night in was left open.
Nice.
I walked out to find all four of the other Wards chatting about something or other. I held down the 'W' key to join them. Clock was sitting on a table, one foot on the ground and the other on the table. Kid Win and Crucible were on a couch near the table. Vista was standing at the side of the couch, leaning a hand on the armrest. All of them only had domino masks on and were in casual wear. Presumably, some of them had stayed here overnight, and they were chatting before school.
Vista was speaking. As I got closer, I was able to make it out. "...Heartbreaker won't come here personally. I've looked up his past movements, something, someone specific has to have caught his interest. Once he has it he'll leave. He's not a city-taking type."
Kid Win nodded. "Lost Garden is really more worrying because they're interested in the Undersiders. Having us take two of their capes is good discouragement, but they still haven't gotten that battle they want. If there's one thing I know about villains, especially after dealing with Skitter, is that if they have a goal in mind and they don't get it, they're going to get antsy. And antsy is bad."
Clock smiled to himself for a moment and shook his head. Crucible noticed, and asked, "Wait, what did you just smile about?"
"It's dumb," said Clockblocker. "I thought of a pun. Since you mentioned Skitter. Antsy villains? Skitter's the antsiest of them all."
Vista snorted. "That was the most shameless pun I think I've heard from you in months, Clock."
In the real world, I was laughing too. That was so top notch.
Clock shook his head. I could hear his smile through his mask. "Thanks. But I want to steer the conversation to the elephant in the room."
For a second, I thought he was going to talk about whatever the hell Cozen's gang was called. But instead of beginning to speak about them, he turned around to face me.
"Steve," he said. "Harold. Now that you're an official Ward, we need to revive an old tradition from my first days here."
Kid Win rubbed his hands dramatically and cackled. Vista grinned in a way that made me suspect she modeled it directly after Tattletale. Poor Crucible just looked confused.
"We shall... brainstorm cape names for you," announced Clockblocker.
I heard a loud, booming thunder strike from somewhere. I quickly turned around, looking out the window, but the sky was clear. Then I turned to see Kid Win laughing while holding a remote.
Did he just have that constantly rigged up or something?
-----------------------------------------------------
"Okay. What about Block Man?"
Kid Win clapped his hands loudly, startling everyone (me included) and said, "Okay, back to the topic at hand. What about Blocksmaster?"
Vista shook her head. "Even though we pretend Defiant is someone else, he'd probably think it would be a joke in poor taste."
Crucible suggested a name for the first time that discussion. "You said the game was made by someone called Notch. What if you name yourself that?"
Oh boy. At this moment I had a choice. I could either explain to them how Notch sold Minecraft to Microsoft in an attempt to get his life back, or...
Kid Win was aghast. "Are you seriously going to ignore that whole story about dead brothers and video game ghosts?"
Clock was silent for a moment. Then, with a perfectly straight face, he said, "I've never heard of such a dead brother. Are you sure you're not hallucinating?"
"What?" Kid looked at Vista. "Vista, you're not gonna just let Clock get away with this."
Vista shook her head, sadly. "I'm sorry, what are you talking about?"
"Wha-" Kid shook his head. "Okay, ha ha, very funny, but this won't work on us. Right, Crucible?"
"What's working on who?" asked Crucible.
Kid Win looked at Clockblocker, then me, then Vista, then Crucible, then at the comm resting on the nearby table. Then he scrolled up the log to make sure he did, in fact, read my half-remembered creepypasta. He looked around the room one last time.
Then he pressed a button on the communicator and alarms started blaring. "ATTENTION, ALL IN ROOM WARDS HQ. YOU ARE TO SUBMIT TO 2 HOURS MINIMUM MASTER/STRANGER CONFINEMENT."
Everyone did different things at once. Vista started shouting, "It was just a joke!" Clock groaned loudly. Crucible grabbed his hands with his face and muttered something about regretting trying to be funny. Kid Win started to yell "I didn't know, I didn't know!"
Me? I was laughing my ass off. Top fucking humor.
-----------------------------------------------------
Two exceptionally boring hours later, I was finally released from preliminary M/S screening. The PRT guys seemed reasonably confident in my assertion that no masters could affect me (since I was in another dimension), but protocols were protocols. In the meantime, however, I had picked up a random book from the shelves, since I couldn't quit the server to grind for materials (that would have gotten me fired from the Wards).
I had picked Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. It was a book about empty people with empty lives trying and failing to find meaning in stuff like bullfighting and romance. The title came from a section of Ecclesiastes:
But that... wouldn't be true anymore, would it? Earth Bet is a place where giant monsters can rip up islands and sink them, where, if nothing changed, if nobody stopped him, a golden man would destroy the sea, and the wind, and the earth.
Existentially, there would be no comfort in such a thought.
I didn't like it.
The characters in the novel didn't have any permanent values, any philosophy to guide themselves in life. If they did, it was only a temporary philosophy, to be discarded along with everything else.
What did I have?
I looked around my bunker. I had my bunker. That's one thing. This wasn't home, but it could serve as one, temporarily.
But that was a thing. It wasn't a value or philosophy. The most valuable thing I owned, my knowledge of Worm's events, was stolen from me before I even woke up.
What did I have?
I had the Wards. That was a start. I had, I hoped, friendship with the Wards. A group roughly my age, with similar problems, even if they didn't have quite the immediate severity as "my real body is in another dimension."
I had myself. Me. Harold Jenkins. There was only one of me in this whole multiverse, and I had to find some kind of comfort in that knowledge, that I was special in that way.
Before waking up here, only, what, two, three days ago? Fuck. Feels like longer. Before waking up here I had lived my life by the philosophy that I was an extra in someone else's feature-length film. Nobody cared about the extras, their eyes would slide right off them. So an extra can do anything they want. Dance as crazy as they wanted, sing as loud as they wanted, make as many jokes as they wanted. It wasn't like anyone would remember after some time passed, anyway. And if someone did notice that the extra in the back of the scene was dabbing ferociously? Then that's a bonus to the viewer.
It stopped working the moment I signed up to the junior superhero team.
Like Jake Barnes just said in the page I was on in The Sun Also Rises, "It seemed like a fine philosophy. In five years, I thought, it will seem just as silly as all the other fine philosophies I've had."
As I continued down the page, I agreed with the next excerpt even more.
"Perhaps that wasn't true, though. Perhaps as you went along you did learn something. I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what it was all about."
Here's to hoping I find out, I thought, as I heard the PA in the M/S room buzz back to life.
-----------------------------------------------------
The Wards, Clockblocker excepted (he was going to New York to do a test-run with Weaver against the Adepts), were late to school. I, on the other hand, had a very brief meeting with the local PR head. He was on the pudgier side, with his button-down shirt far too tight on him. His forehead glistened with sweat, and his shirt had wet patches around the shoulder area. I hoped it was just the June heat that was making him so sweaty. He took one look at me and groaned.
"Case 53?" he asked.
I shook my head and placed the communicator on the ground in front of him.
He picked it up and glanced at it, then at me.
"So do you talk through this?"
I held down shift and moved my head towards the floor to symbolize submission.
"Okay," he began. "So these are all the pictures my boss was able to get. I sketched some, some, ideas about what we could do."
I walked over and looked at the table. It was covered in photographs of me, from that time I was lost in the PRT lobby to the very first day on the beach.
"So, I was, was wondering. You look like you're wearing jeans and a black shirt, but can, can you change it?" He turned to me, his eyes shifting back and forth between me and the door. "I know that my, my daughter plays those fashion games where, where you change the outfit of the dolls. Since the, the file I have says you have game powers."
The poor guy looked back towards the door, where the comm remained, reading out my words. He shook his head and began to waddle over to a cabinet.
"I spent all night, last night, all of the night, working on these." With a flourish that would have looked far more dramatic if the PR guy (whose name I still didn't know) didn't seem to be one sentence from me away from keeling over, the doors opened to reveal a set of papercraft models that instantly made me nostalgic for the early days of Minecraft.
Some of the designs were far too complex, or too three-dimensional to be used. But some of them...
"I got the, the inspiration from Dwarf Fortress. He's, he's the main character, the logo of the game."
Dwarf Fortress? The text-based game? That was made in the late nineties, long after capes had started appearing. I wondered how it had changed from the game I knew.
Holy shit.
Dwarf Fortress is a shameless cash grab in this timeline. Also, their logo looks like Honeydew's Minecraft skin from the Yogscast, but that was probably a coincidence.
A world without the Disney Renaissance, Dwarf Fortress or the dollar bill? Earth Bet really is the darkest timeline. I needed to fix this somehow. This would be my revolution. Dwarf Fortress wouldn't cut it - I needed a more iconic look.
"That's, that's Captain Marvel. I made this one just for fun, based on a, a comic character I liked when I was little. Only one I really read."
-----------------------------------------------------
CURRENT INVENTORY
-----------------------------------------------------
A/N: Every 400 words I do on chapter 9, I post another chapter.
Only mostly joking on that one.
Anyway, if you want to help chapters come out quicker, come on down to my beta hub!
The link is here: LINK
Anyways. Shameless plug aside, I hope y'all are enjoying this story. I have a lot of fun writing it.
Also, I thought of the chapter title right before I posted it and I'm so damn proud
Nice.
I walked out to find all four of the other Wards chatting about something or other. I held down the 'W' key to join them. Clock was sitting on a table, one foot on the ground and the other on the table. Kid Win and Crucible were on a couch near the table. Vista was standing at the side of the couch, leaning a hand on the armrest. All of them only had domino masks on and were in casual wear. Presumably, some of them had stayed here overnight, and they were chatting before school.
Vista was speaking. As I got closer, I was able to make it out. "...Heartbreaker won't come here personally. I've looked up his past movements, something, someone specific has to have caught his interest. Once he has it he'll leave. He's not a city-taking type."
Kid Win nodded. "Lost Garden is really more worrying because they're interested in the Undersiders. Having us take two of their capes is good discouragement, but they still haven't gotten that battle they want. If there's one thing I know about villains, especially after dealing with Skitter, is that if they have a goal in mind and they don't get it, they're going to get antsy. And antsy is bad."
Clock smiled to himself for a moment and shook his head. Crucible noticed, and asked, "Wait, what did you just smile about?"
"It's dumb," said Clockblocker. "I thought of a pun. Since you mentioned Skitter. Antsy villains? Skitter's the antsiest of them all."
Vista snorted. "That was the most shameless pun I think I've heard from you in months, Clock."
In the real world, I was laughing too. That was so top notch.
Clock shook his head. I could hear his smile through his mask. "Thanks. But I want to steer the conversation to the elephant in the room."
For a second, I thought he was going to talk about whatever the hell Cozen's gang was called. But instead of beginning to speak about them, he turned around to face me.
"Steve," he said. "Harold. Now that you're an official Ward, we need to revive an old tradition from my first days here."
Kid Win rubbed his hands dramatically and cackled. Vista grinned in a way that made me suspect she modeled it directly after Tattletale. Poor Crucible just looked confused.
"We shall... brainstorm cape names for you," announced Clockblocker.
I heard a loud, booming thunder strike from somewhere. I quickly turned around, looking out the window, but the sky was clear. Then I turned to see Kid Win laughing while holding a remote.
Did he just have that constantly rigged up or something?
-----------------------------------------------------
"Okay. What about Block Man?"
"Artificer?"
"Foundry?"
Kid Win looked up from the tablet. "Google? What's that?"
I walked over and looked at Kid Win's tablet. For just a moment, I feared the absolute worst and expected to see the Bing logo headlining the page he was on. Instead, I saw...
"You don't know about Go.com?" asked Vista.
Now Vista looked really confused. "You mean the movie company? They've been out of business for years, what would they have to do with Go.com?"
The Wards looked at each other. "Do you mean the Hans Christian Andersen story?" Crucible offered.
Clock shook his head, apologetically offering a half-smile. "Sorry. Alternate universe stuff?"
Vista just looked at me. My blocky, two-by-one pixel eyes. It probably absolutely sucked to talk to me.
Kid Win clapped his hands loudly, startling everyone (me included) and said, "Okay, back to the topic at hand. What about Blocksmaster?"
Vista shook her head. "Even though we pretend Defiant is someone else, he'd probably think it would be a joke in poor taste."
Crucible suggested a name for the first time that discussion. "You said the game was made by someone called Notch. What if you name yourself that?"
Kid Win's eyes widened. "Wait, is this guy dead?"
Oh boy. At this moment I had a choice. I could either explain to them how Notch sold Minecraft to Microsoft in an attempt to get his life back, or...
The Wards were silent. Then Clockblocker broke the silence by saying, "That's a pretty slick cape name. You should take it, Harold."
Kid Win was aghast. "Are you seriously going to ignore that whole story about dead brothers and video game ghosts?"
Clock was silent for a moment. Then, with a perfectly straight face, he said, "I've never heard of such a dead brother. Are you sure you're not hallucinating?"
"What?" Kid looked at Vista. "Vista, you're not gonna just let Clock get away with this."
Vista shook her head, sadly. "I'm sorry, what are you talking about?"
"Wha-" Kid shook his head. "Okay, ha ha, very funny, but this won't work on us. Right, Crucible?"
"What's working on who?" asked Crucible.
Kid Win looked at Clockblocker, then me, then Vista, then Crucible, then at the comm resting on the nearby table. Then he scrolled up the log to make sure he did, in fact, read my half-remembered creepypasta. He looked around the room one last time.
Then he pressed a button on the communicator and alarms started blaring. "ATTENTION, ALL IN ROOM WARDS HQ. YOU ARE TO SUBMIT TO 2 HOURS MINIMUM MASTER/STRANGER CONFINEMENT."
Everyone did different things at once. Vista started shouting, "It was just a joke!" Clock groaned loudly. Crucible grabbed his hands with his face and muttered something about regretting trying to be funny. Kid Win started to yell "I didn't know, I didn't know!"
Me? I was laughing my ass off. Top fucking humor.
-----------------------------------------------------
Two exceptionally boring hours later, I was finally released from preliminary M/S screening. The PRT guys seemed reasonably confident in my assertion that no masters could affect me (since I was in another dimension), but protocols were protocols. In the meantime, however, I had picked up a random book from the shelves, since I couldn't quit the server to grind for materials (that would have gotten me fired from the Wards).
I had picked Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. It was a book about empty people with empty lives trying and failing to find meaning in stuff like bullfighting and romance. The title came from a section of Ecclesiastes:
One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever... The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose... The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.... All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.
But that... wouldn't be true anymore, would it? Earth Bet is a place where giant monsters can rip up islands and sink them, where, if nothing changed, if nobody stopped him, a golden man would destroy the sea, and the wind, and the earth.
Existentially, there would be no comfort in such a thought.
I didn't like it.
The characters in the novel didn't have any permanent values, any philosophy to guide themselves in life. If they did, it was only a temporary philosophy, to be discarded along with everything else.
What did I have?
I looked around my bunker. I had my bunker. That's one thing. This wasn't home, but it could serve as one, temporarily.
But that was a thing. It wasn't a value or philosophy. The most valuable thing I owned, my knowledge of Worm's events, was stolen from me before I even woke up.
What did I have?
I had the Wards. That was a start. I had, I hoped, friendship with the Wards. A group roughly my age, with similar problems, even if they didn't have quite the immediate severity as "my real body is in another dimension."
I had myself. Me. Harold Jenkins. There was only one of me in this whole multiverse, and I had to find some kind of comfort in that knowledge, that I was special in that way.
Before waking up here, only, what, two, three days ago? Fuck. Feels like longer. Before waking up here I had lived my life by the philosophy that I was an extra in someone else's feature-length film. Nobody cared about the extras, their eyes would slide right off them. So an extra can do anything they want. Dance as crazy as they wanted, sing as loud as they wanted, make as many jokes as they wanted. It wasn't like anyone would remember after some time passed, anyway. And if someone did notice that the extra in the back of the scene was dabbing ferociously? Then that's a bonus to the viewer.
It stopped working the moment I signed up to the junior superhero team.
Like Jake Barnes just said in the page I was on in The Sun Also Rises, "It seemed like a fine philosophy. In five years, I thought, it will seem just as silly as all the other fine philosophies I've had."
As I continued down the page, I agreed with the next excerpt even more.
"Perhaps that wasn't true, though. Perhaps as you went along you did learn something. I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what it was all about."
Here's to hoping I find out, I thought, as I heard the PA in the M/S room buzz back to life.
-----------------------------------------------------
The Wards, Clockblocker excepted (he was going to New York to do a test-run with Weaver against the Adepts), were late to school. I, on the other hand, had a very brief meeting with the local PR head. He was on the pudgier side, with his button-down shirt far too tight on him. His forehead glistened with sweat, and his shirt had wet patches around the shoulder area. I hoped it was just the June heat that was making him so sweaty. He took one look at me and groaned.
"Case 53?" he asked.
I shook my head and placed the communicator on the ground in front of him.
He picked it up and glanced at it, then at me.
The PR guy looked startled to hear a robotic voice come out of the speaker of the comm. He leaned into it and started to talk into the comm's microphone, putting his mouth way too close to it.
"So do you talk through this?"
The robotic text-to-speech made the poor PR guy jump and drop the comm. It clattered to the floor.
The PR guy stared at the small device that output my words, and then looked at me. It took him considerable effort, but he screwed up his face and spoke. "Now, listen here, you, you, parahuman. You came here to get my advice, and, and, and, I'm going to give it to you."
I held down shift and moved my head towards the floor to symbolize submission.
The PR guy stared at me incredulously, then turned around and walked over to a table, completely ignoring my totally heartfelt apology. What a dick.
"Okay," he began. "So these are all the pictures my boss was able to get. I sketched some, some, ideas about what we could do."
I walked over and looked at the table. It was covered in photographs of me, from that time I was lost in the PRT lobby to the very first day on the beach.
"So, I was, was wondering. You look like you're wearing jeans and a black shirt, but can, can you change it?" He turned to me, his eyes shifting back and forth between me and the door. "I know that my, my daughter plays those fashion games where, where you change the outfit of the dolls. Since the, the file I have says you have game powers."
The poor guy looked back towards the door, where the comm remained, reading out my words. He shook his head and began to waddle over to a cabinet.
"I spent all night, last night, all of the night, working on these." With a flourish that would have looked far more dramatic if the PR guy (whose name I still didn't know) didn't seem to be one sentence from me away from keeling over, the doors opened to reveal a set of papercraft models that instantly made me nostalgic for the early days of Minecraft.
Some of the designs were far too complex, or too three-dimensional to be used. But some of them...
With wide eyes, the PR guy looked to me, then his model, then back to me. Then he swooped his gaze over to the model and walked very close to it as if looking at it in a new light.
"I got the, the inspiration from Dwarf Fortress. He's, he's the main character, the logo of the game."
Dwarf Fortress? The text-based game? That was made in the late nineties, long after capes had started appearing. I wondered how it had changed from the game I knew.
"Oh," said the PR guy, blushing slightly, "it's a phone game. It's a Dig Dug clone, but it's a lot of fun, especially with how you can spend the gems you get from the digging part into a slot machine minigame for new dwarves."
Holy shit.
Dwarf Fortress is a shameless cash grab in this timeline. Also, their logo looks like Honeydew's Minecraft skin from the Yogscast, but that was probably a coincidence.
A world without the Disney Renaissance, Dwarf Fortress or the dollar bill? Earth Bet really is the darkest timeline. I needed to fix this somehow. This would be my revolution. Dwarf Fortress wouldn't cut it - I needed a more iconic look.
The PR guy glanced at the general direction my eyes peered. He looked at me, then at his shelf. I crouched and began slowly walking towards the papercraft figurine I wanted to bring to his attention.
The poor PRT guy seemed to have given up understanding what I meant because he stuck a shaky finger in between my blocky eyes and traced its path down to the figure I was referring to. He picked it up and stared at it.
"That's, that's Captain Marvel. I made this one just for fun, based on a, a comic character I liked when I was little. Only one I really read."
The PR guy put a hand behind his head. "Uh, DC used to publish it? I think? But they've been out of business now, for, for a long time. Most of the big, uh, superhero comic books really went out of fashion."
The PR guy put a hand to his mouth and gasped. "You absolutely cannot make a costume that derivative. No way. Uh-uh."
The PR guy shook his head. "It doesn't matter, anyway. I, I heard that you had thought of a name, and depending on it it might change everything I would have planned."
The PR guy took a handkerchief out of his breast pocket and wiped his forehead with it. After he was done he stared at the sweat-soaked rag, mumbled under his breath, and threw it into the nearby trashcan.
-----------------------------------------------------
CURRENT INVENTORY
-----------------------------------------------------
A/N: Every 400 words I do on chapter 9, I post another chapter.
Only mostly joking on that one.
Anyway, if you want to help chapters come out quicker, come on down to my beta hub!
The link is here: LINK
Anyways. Shameless plug aside, I hope y'all are enjoying this story. I have a lot of fun writing it.
Also, I thought of the chapter title right before I posted it and I'm so damn proud
- Location
- Earth Prime
You poor, poor boy. Why would you subject yourself to Hemmingway? *shudder*
I wonder what's up with him. Why's he so nervous?
Vaalintine
Wild Wondorous Wolfalope
So why is the PR guy so angry at him? Isn't it his job to advise parahumans? They haven't gotten past "Hello" and apparently he should be ashamed of himself?
EtchJetty
I did that thing that one time!
- Location
- USA
You'll love chapter 9, then. Spoilers: you've met the PoV character.
- Location
- Earth Prime
Ah, PR dude?
Tisaku
Head Chief Thinkomancer
-Why are they so bent out of shape? He told them that he was not there, that what they could see was nothing but an avatar. Vista commented on it.-
- Location
- Missouri
They probably think he's delusional, or otherwise don't realize he really literally means he's sitting in a chair utterly disconnected from what's going on.
On an unrelated note, now I'm wondering what would happen if he took Armsmaster's armor, logged out, went into SSP, enchanted it with lvl 30 enchants, and brought it back.
Chapter 8 - Hard Times
EtchJetty
I did that thing that one time!
- Location
- USA
As it turns out, perhaps unsurprisingly, it was very boring to be a Ward under official punishment.
Due perhaps mostly to my unique set of circumstances, much of my time was spent in the chair watching Vista patrol with Clockblocker. That was, the chair was metaphorical. I was actually sitting in a real chair, in the real world, but my avatar was basically just staring at the set of monitors I had seen when I first met Vista.
Thanks to my limited handiness in Brockton I wasn't really able to help out on the hotline, either. In case of emergency, a PRT employee had temporarily received the same comm that Clockblocker had used just the day before. I was to send a message to them so they could transfer a call or something. Inefficient, but it sort of worked? It didn't really matter, because Assault was in the next room over, stewing over the same feed.
Assault really didn't look too good when I had seen him. Not sick, or haggardly, or anything. Just... angry. And slightly disheveled. Kid Win had given him a comm right before running out for school, and Assault had just stared at it for a moment.
I used /msg and sent him a command.
There was a pause. Now that I had thought about it, did anyone teach Assault how to actually use the comm?
Ah, shit.
That should settle it. I leaned back in my chair and turned the page. Jake Barnes had just introduced Brett Ashley to Pedro Romero, and that was, to quote Sonic the Hedgehog, a decision that was "no good."
Dammit, Brett. Always ruining everything.
Pedro and Brett had struck up a conversation. It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion. I turned the page.
Pedro had just declared to Brett he was going to live forever. That was, Pedro Romero, the professional bullfighter.
Maybe I was throwing stones, living in a glass house myself as a professional junior superhero, but that was probably not the best tactic for a long life, no matter how good you are.
I turned the page.
It was another few minutes before I got any new notifications.
Of course he was.
I sighed. This was going nowhere. They could handle it if I went AFK for a few minutes, right?
What a good guy, that Agent Johnson. That was the first time someone had actually referred to me as "Herobrine," and it definitely made me feel feelings. I still wasn't sure if they were good feelings or bad feelings yet, but they were feelings.
On one hand, receiving a real cape name and getting referred to by it meant things were really, well, real. I had signed myself up to be a junior superhero, and I had a name now. People could google "Herobrine" and soon enough I would come up.
On the other hand, naming myself "Herobrine" was on par with "Coldsteel the Hedgeheg." But both references were moot in an alternate universe where both source games didn't exist. For all I knew, an assassin named Coldsteel actually had the power to teleport behind you. Earth Bet was just that weird.
I scooted out of my chair and stood up. Stretching my back, I looked around the room. What to do, what to do?
There were the games. The unfamiliar consoles had caught my interest on my first day in the bunker. But I didn't think I would play them just yet. I personally had always had a bit of a steep learning curve when it came to picking up and using a new controller type, and the one attached to the console was... well, it was from an alternate dimension.
I moved on. Books. There were some quality titles I recognized from before 1982. I also recognized the Maggie Holt series, but I had intentionally avoided picking it up earlier today. I was reading The Sun Also Rises, but I had been sedentary the whole time while reading it. Wasn't there anything more active to do?
I was restless.
I was anxious.
"Contessa, or Custodian, or whoever," I said to the open air. "This would be a wonderful time to Deus Ex Machina some shit to fix whatever I'm feeling right now."
No answer came. If I hadn't imagined Custodian last night, she certainly wasn't here now.
I kept scanning the room, seeing if anything caught my interest. In the puzzle and board game shelves sat a copy of "CLUE: Maggie Holt Edition." That was pretty neat. I walked over to see what other fun things I could find. There were games I had never heard of, like something called "Penguin News," and others I realized logically speaking should exist, like "Monopoly: Special Protectorate Edition" featuring a very bad-ass Hero, Alexandria, Eidolon, and Legend floating in the air facing a little boy who had dropped his ice-cream cone in shock and awe. Cute.
The absences on the shelves depressed me. No Harry Potter. No Pokémon. There were things branded with the Nintendo Logo, but Mario looked very different, his colors inverted (blue on red) instead of what I was used to (red on blue). On many of the boxes for Nintendo-branded puzzles and board games he appeared in a circle, giving a Vault-Boy like thumbs up and smile above the words "Nintendo Seal of Quality."
It unsettled me to see Mario showing teeth like that. I shuddered involuntarily.
I kept moving around the room. I had tried out the shower, slept in the bed, and somehow despite being in the same clothes as yesterday I still didn't feel gross in them. Tinkertech fabrics, presumably.
That still left me with the considerable problem of what to do?
Then the refrigerator caught my eye.
I ran up to it and threw open the door. The rows of Doormaker Dishes stared back, and I picked one at random. I sprinted over to the table, practically tripping over it, and pressed the button.
Out of the square portal fell two pieces of bread, some butter, and a small bowl of shredded cheese. Each was in a little serving-size container, separate from the other ingredients.
So that was the game. They were going to have me Blue Apron up some of my own meals because I was taking what they were giving me for granted. Well, that wouldn't work on me! I am a grilled cheese master! One time in the seventh grade, a teacher of mine stopped the class for ten minutes to explain his grilled cheese recipe, and now he travels across the country running a food truck! So I would say I was pretty qualified to do this!
I turned to the kitchen. Fully stocked. Pots and pans. I was going to make a grilled cheese in the pan, and it was going to be amazing.
-----------------------------------------------------
It was not amazing.
To be honest, it had started out pretty promising. I found a pan I wanted to use pretty easily, and it fit on the gas stove. From there, I found a plate and put the bread on it. The next step was to butter the bread. Simple.
That was where the problems began.
Despite searching through all of the drawers for what felt like at least ten minutes, I could not find a single knife anywhere. Not one!
I had found the ever-important spatula, forks, spoons, sporks, chopsticks, a few shot glasses, a pizza cutter, an ice-cream scoop, even a Kiddush cup, but not a single knife anywhere.
It wasn't really an important part of the lasagna experience, since it was so soft (and perfect) that I could have cut through it with the side of my fork, but I vaguely remembered a knife dropping out of the portal, so I kept looking for that one.
Come to think of it, where did the waste I had after meals go?
After shaking my head and teaching the air a few curse words, I decided to use the end of a spoon to spread the butter on the bread. Both sides of both slices now had the fat of miracles on them.
I located the knobs on the stove and turned one to 'HI', clicking it down to ignite the flames. It fwooshed up and would have scorched the ceiling had I not turned it way the fuck down to 'LO' the instant the flames came out bright orange instead of a lighter blue.
Jesus. Why did Cauldron even need a stove this powerful?
On second thought, I didn't want to know. I placed the pan on the stove, adding in the last of the butter. Then I scooped the to-be toast into the pan, hearing that delightful fzzz as it began to sizzle. I added in the second slice, too.
After some time, I flipped both over and sprinkled the cheese onto them. Then I stared at the two pieces of toast, one side cooked and the other cooking, each with a small mound of cheese, and muttered to myself, "what next?"
I stared at the pan, hearing the sizzle. I felt the heat of the stove on my face, the spatula in my hand. Was this what Spongebob felt like in that episode he forgot how to make Krabby Patties? Just stared at the grill, wondering what life had come to?
"Fuck it," I muttered. I took the spatula and shoved it under one of the slices. Then I flipped it onto the other one.
Unfortunately, I did not have the grace nor the dexterity to make it so that this simple gesture wasn't a horrible disaster that ruined the pan forever by having half of the shredded cheese land on it directly, burning instantly and becoming stuck to it despite my efforts with steel wool.
All in all, my adventure lasted about twenty minutes, at which point I used another Doormaker Dish and I got a beautiful, hot restaurant-style grilled cheese on a plate appear through the portal.
Yeah, yeah. I got the message.
Don't try anything, idiot. You'd mess it up.
-----------------------------------------------------
I sat back down and asked in the chat if I had missed anything. The chat instantly exploded.
Fucking peak, Agent.
I sighed. I felt bad, now. It had just slipped my mind again. Something about the idea of typing out a message in Minecraft to the people who essentially employed me (I couldn't exactly spend the money I would presumably earn) felt wrong.
Oh.
So that was what I had to do, apparently.
No problem. I was great with kids. My charm and charisma (and bullshit) usually wowed them into submission. Plus, I was a camp counselor for a time, and I knew a lot of games I could play with them.
I held down the 'W' key and was halfway through the room before I realized the problem.
I couldn't talk. I couldn't even gesture. This was probably going to look really, really bad.
-----------------------------------------------------
CURRENT INVENTORY
-----------------------------------------------------
A/N: 400 more words on Chapter 9! You know what that means, it's chapter time! :dab:
Fun fact: The grilled cheese story is based on true events. I may be a fanfic writer of (*cough*) high esteem, but a chef I most certainly am not.
Comments are, as always, appreciated.
Due perhaps mostly to my unique set of circumstances, much of my time was spent in the chair watching Vista patrol with Clockblocker. That was, the chair was metaphorical. I was actually sitting in a real chair, in the real world, but my avatar was basically just staring at the set of monitors I had seen when I first met Vista.
Thanks to my limited handiness in Brockton I wasn't really able to help out on the hotline, either. In case of emergency, a PRT employee had temporarily received the same comm that Clockblocker had used just the day before. I was to send a message to them so they could transfer a call or something. Inefficient, but it sort of worked? It didn't really matter, because Assault was in the next room over, stewing over the same feed.
Assault really didn't look too good when I had seen him. Not sick, or haggardly, or anything. Just... angry. And slightly disheveled. Kid Win had given him a comm right before running out for school, and Assault had just stared at it for a moment.
I used /msg and sent him a command.
There was a pause. Now that I had thought about it, did anyone teach Assault how to actually use the comm?
Ah, shit.
That should settle it. I leaned back in my chair and turned the page. Jake Barnes had just introduced Brett Ashley to Pedro Romero, and that was, to quote Sonic the Hedgehog, a decision that was "no good."
Dammit, Brett. Always ruining everything.
Pedro and Brett had struck up a conversation. It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion. I turned the page.
That was a little inconvenient, but I could deal. Protocol was protocol. I returned my eyes to the book in my hands.
Pedro had just declared to Brett he was going to live forever. That was, Pedro Romero, the professional bullfighter.
Maybe I was throwing stones, living in a glass house myself as a professional junior superhero, but that was probably not the best tactic for a long life, no matter how good you are.
I turned the page.
It was another few minutes before I got any new notifications.
Of course he was.
I sighed. This was going nowhere. They could handle it if I went AFK for a few minutes, right?
What a good guy, that Agent Johnson. That was the first time someone had actually referred to me as "Herobrine," and it definitely made me feel feelings. I still wasn't sure if they were good feelings or bad feelings yet, but they were feelings.
On one hand, receiving a real cape name and getting referred to by it meant things were really, well, real. I had signed myself up to be a junior superhero, and I had a name now. People could google "Herobrine" and soon enough I would come up.
On the other hand, naming myself "Herobrine" was on par with "Coldsteel the Hedgeheg." But both references were moot in an alternate universe where both source games didn't exist. For all I knew, an assassin named Coldsteel actually had the power to teleport behind you. Earth Bet was just that weird.
I scooted out of my chair and stood up. Stretching my back, I looked around the room. What to do, what to do?
There were the games. The unfamiliar consoles had caught my interest on my first day in the bunker. But I didn't think I would play them just yet. I personally had always had a bit of a steep learning curve when it came to picking up and using a new controller type, and the one attached to the console was... well, it was from an alternate dimension.
I moved on. Books. There were some quality titles I recognized from before 1982. I also recognized the Maggie Holt series, but I had intentionally avoided picking it up earlier today. I was reading The Sun Also Rises, but I had been sedentary the whole time while reading it. Wasn't there anything more active to do?
I was restless.
I was anxious.
"Contessa, or Custodian, or whoever," I said to the open air. "This would be a wonderful time to Deus Ex Machina some shit to fix whatever I'm feeling right now."
No answer came. If I hadn't imagined Custodian last night, she certainly wasn't here now.
I kept scanning the room, seeing if anything caught my interest. In the puzzle and board game shelves sat a copy of "CLUE: Maggie Holt Edition." That was pretty neat. I walked over to see what other fun things I could find. There were games I had never heard of, like something called "Penguin News," and others I realized logically speaking should exist, like "Monopoly: Special Protectorate Edition" featuring a very bad-ass Hero, Alexandria, Eidolon, and Legend floating in the air facing a little boy who had dropped his ice-cream cone in shock and awe. Cute.
The absences on the shelves depressed me. No Harry Potter. No Pokémon. There were things branded with the Nintendo Logo, but Mario looked very different, his colors inverted (blue on red) instead of what I was used to (red on blue). On many of the boxes for Nintendo-branded puzzles and board games he appeared in a circle, giving a Vault-Boy like thumbs up and smile above the words "Nintendo Seal of Quality."
It unsettled me to see Mario showing teeth like that. I shuddered involuntarily.
I kept moving around the room. I had tried out the shower, slept in the bed, and somehow despite being in the same clothes as yesterday I still didn't feel gross in them. Tinkertech fabrics, presumably.
That still left me with the considerable problem of what to do?
Then the refrigerator caught my eye.
I ran up to it and threw open the door. The rows of Doormaker Dishes stared back, and I picked one at random. I sprinted over to the table, practically tripping over it, and pressed the button.
Out of the square portal fell two pieces of bread, some butter, and a small bowl of shredded cheese. Each was in a little serving-size container, separate from the other ingredients.
So that was the game. They were going to have me Blue Apron up some of my own meals because I was taking what they were giving me for granted. Well, that wouldn't work on me! I am a grilled cheese master! One time in the seventh grade, a teacher of mine stopped the class for ten minutes to explain his grilled cheese recipe, and now he travels across the country running a food truck! So I would say I was pretty qualified to do this!
I turned to the kitchen. Fully stocked. Pots and pans. I was going to make a grilled cheese in the pan, and it was going to be amazing.
-----------------------------------------------------
It was not amazing.
To be honest, it had started out pretty promising. I found a pan I wanted to use pretty easily, and it fit on the gas stove. From there, I found a plate and put the bread on it. The next step was to butter the bread. Simple.
That was where the problems began.
Despite searching through all of the drawers for what felt like at least ten minutes, I could not find a single knife anywhere. Not one!
I had found the ever-important spatula, forks, spoons, sporks, chopsticks, a few shot glasses, a pizza cutter, an ice-cream scoop, even a Kiddush cup, but not a single knife anywhere.
It wasn't really an important part of the lasagna experience, since it was so soft (and perfect) that I could have cut through it with the side of my fork, but I vaguely remembered a knife dropping out of the portal, so I kept looking for that one.
Come to think of it, where did the waste I had after meals go?
After shaking my head and teaching the air a few curse words, I decided to use the end of a spoon to spread the butter on the bread. Both sides of both slices now had the fat of miracles on them.
I located the knobs on the stove and turned one to 'HI', clicking it down to ignite the flames. It fwooshed up and would have scorched the ceiling had I not turned it way the fuck down to 'LO' the instant the flames came out bright orange instead of a lighter blue.
Jesus. Why did Cauldron even need a stove this powerful?
On second thought, I didn't want to know. I placed the pan on the stove, adding in the last of the butter. Then I scooped the to-be toast into the pan, hearing that delightful fzzz as it began to sizzle. I added in the second slice, too.
After some time, I flipped both over and sprinkled the cheese onto them. Then I stared at the two pieces of toast, one side cooked and the other cooking, each with a small mound of cheese, and muttered to myself, "what next?"
I stared at the pan, hearing the sizzle. I felt the heat of the stove on my face, the spatula in my hand. Was this what Spongebob felt like in that episode he forgot how to make Krabby Patties? Just stared at the grill, wondering what life had come to?
"Fuck it," I muttered. I took the spatula and shoved it under one of the slices. Then I flipped it onto the other one.
Unfortunately, I did not have the grace nor the dexterity to make it so that this simple gesture wasn't a horrible disaster that ruined the pan forever by having half of the shredded cheese land on it directly, burning instantly and becoming stuck to it despite my efforts with steel wool.
All in all, my adventure lasted about twenty minutes, at which point I used another Doormaker Dish and I got a beautiful, hot restaurant-style grilled cheese on a plate appear through the portal.
Yeah, yeah. I got the message.
Don't try anything, idiot. You'd mess it up.
-----------------------------------------------------
I sat back down and asked in the chat if I had missed anything. The chat instantly exploded.
Fucking peak, Agent.
I sighed. I felt bad, now. It had just slipped my mind again. Something about the idea of typing out a message in Minecraft to the people who essentially employed me (I couldn't exactly spend the money I would presumably earn) felt wrong.
I raised an eyebrow, but I didn't send anything snarky back. There I found the following messages:
Oh.
So that was what I had to do, apparently.
No problem. I was great with kids. My charm and charisma (and bullshit) usually wowed them into submission. Plus, I was a camp counselor for a time, and I knew a lot of games I could play with them.
I held down the 'W' key and was halfway through the room before I realized the problem.
I couldn't talk. I couldn't even gesture. This was probably going to look really, really bad.
-----------------------------------------------------
CURRENT INVENTORY
-----------------------------------------------------
A/N: 400 more words on Chapter 9! You know what that means, it's chapter time! :dab:
Because Chapter 9 isn't actually done yet, it's going to take a little bit of time to go up on my beta hub. This means there will be a bit of a longer delay than usual. Not really a problem, considering I don't have anything approaching a consistent upload schedule regardless.
Anyway. If you want to beta when I do finish, come on down to my Beta Hub!
The link is here: LINK
Anyway. If you want to beta when I do finish, come on down to my Beta Hub!
The link is here: LINK
Fun fact: The grilled cheese story is based on true events. I may be a fanfic writer of (*cough*) high esteem, but a chef I most certainly am not.
Comments are, as always, appreciated.
- Location
- Earth Prime
Tisaku has a good point, actually. He's basically told them he's a projection.
...huh. That'd be an interesting variation on a projection Master power: can't project to his own Earth, but can project to alternate Earths.
Edit: Oh, and now there's a new chapter!
Yeaaaah... The PR guy has met him. He knows he can't talk. What is his angle, here? Is he trying to sabotage PR, or is he just that incompetent?
Also, what was the deal with the grilled cheese? He didn't do anything I could pick up from the text to count as "bad behavior" that would provoke Contessa into punishing him with a do-it-yourself that is deliberately sabotaged. He just...decided to get some food.
So there's a "message" delivered, we're told, but I honestly don't see where that message comes from. It just seems random. What am I missing?
Last edited:
- Location
- Seattle, Washington, USA
Were it me, I'd have used the spatula, given that spreading things is one of the designed uses of one of the two types of spatula. Spatulas come in two general types -- the sort that are good for spreading and the sort that are good for flipping things like grilled cheese sandwiches. What spatula does that guy have that wouldn't be useful for either task?
I'd be amused if the list of kids included a red haired girl, a blond boy and his pet mole rat.
- Location
- sweden
You will be suprised someone with spoons a super hot flame and something hard can do imagine a hollow rose of blades
To be honest, in a fic about Minecraft I was expecting more mining and crafting.
Building your floating sky castle. Automated farms to provide the dyes and building material and maybe giving the people that need it extremely cheap or free food.
Echanting and magic item creation setup.
Huge holes in the earth and caverns that could fit in a city being quarried out.
Maybe crazy autofactories if moded Minecraft got involved.
Building your floating sky castle. Automated farms to provide the dyes and building material and maybe giving the people that need it extremely cheap or free food.
Echanting and magic item creation setup.
Huge holes in the earth and caverns that could fit in a city being quarried out.
Maybe crazy autofactories if moded Minecraft got involved.
Last edited:
EtchJetty
I did that thing that one time!
- Location
- USA
Two things.
1. The fic isn't about Minecraft. Minecraft is just a vehicle for the major themes of the fic: whether the friends you make online are as valid as real-life ones, and the difference between what you can do in a game without consequences and what you can do in real life. It's also a self-indulgent power fantasy, of course, jam-packed with references and homages to other fics and things I enjoy.
2. The title of the thread is "I Prefer Chocolate (Worm/Vanilla Minecraft SI)." No mods will be present in this fic.
However, your point is noted. More ordinary Minecraft shenanigans coming in Chapter 10.
Chapter 9 - Storytime! (NOT CLICKBAIT)
EtchJetty
I did that thing that one time!
- Location
- USA
To Clarence Williams, temporary PR head for the PRT ENE, Herobrine's storytelling performance for Middleton Elementary's visiting school children looked very bad indeed.
Hand covering two-thirds of his face, Clarence peeked through his fingers just to make sure that what he was seeing was, in fact, happening.
"That's not my superhero," droned the monotone voice of Kid Win's comm. "His cape is too fluffy. So, now, whoever has the book, you can feel the cape, and see that it is, in fact, very fluffy. There you go."
The blocky figure of Herobrine stood there, sentinel-like, staring over the kids. Sure, he made an effort. When the text was being read, he nodded, as if talking. He'd walk back and forth, and gesture vaguely in the direction of the child holding the story. The only issue?
The kids did not like it. Not at all.
One kid burst into tears as Herobrine looked at him.
Over the years, as Clarence had risen through the ranks, he'd heard about all sorts of different plans to make capes more accepted in society. For the normal, human capes, these plans had worked wonders. The last organized general anti-cape group disbanded in 2006, a little after Cornea had died. But the Case 53 efforts had been more... slow-going.
Weld was a win, though. Was being the operative word, because after something happened downtown (Clarence was away visiting his cousin in Philadelphia at the time), he and a lot of others of his kind had left the Protectorate, taking decades of progress with him.
When he'd received news of Herobrine joining the Wards, Clarence was genuinely excited about a new cape for the first time in years. The retro aesthetic, if a little childish, had infinite potential. Why the parahuman had decided to dress in what looked to him in the photos as cardboard boxes, he didn't know, but capes were by definition an odd bunch.
Then when Herobrine had walked into his office and it turned out he literally was a series of floating colored cuboids, all of Clarence's dreams had been thrown away with his sweat-covered handkerchief.
Herobrine wasn't a new hero with a cool sense of style. He was an annoying idiot with a dumb sense of humor who had signed up for the Wards because they gave him a free voicebox.
So, Clarence had decided to schedule him for this PR event. Was it petty? Yes. But he also did legitimately want to see how Herobrine would react to being faced with a crowd. In some ways, children were both easier and harder to deal with than a press conference.
"That's not my superhero," continued Herobrine. "Her helmet is too shiny. Ooh, try not to get blinded, kiddos. That's a bonafide LED in there."
Clarence had figured out pretty quickly Herobrine tended on the "bad with kids" side of things.
As Clarence tried not to visibly facepalm too hard, the security guard next to him elbowed him.
"Hey," said the guard.
Clarence glanced at the guard's breastplate. Trooper Anderson nudged Clarence again.
"Hey," said Anderson. "I made something."
He had pulled out a smartphone while he nudged Clarence. Anderson navigated to the gallery app and scrolled down to the most recent image. Tapping on it, he turned his phone sideways, and the image filled the screen.
It was an image of Herobrine with the kids. He stood over them, looking like more like a cardboard statue than a superhero. The kids were visibly upset. The caption was written on the split between the bottom and the top:
"THIS JUST IN: KIDS DON'T LIKE PLAYING WITH BLOCKS ANYMORE"
"BOTTOM TEXT"
Clarence was less than excited by the meme.
"You, you should probably delete that," he whispered.
"What?" said Anderson. "Why?"
Clarence took a moment to formulate a response. "As the man currently in charge of the Brockton PR department, I am telling you you should delete that. It's detrimental to the whole operation we're doing here."
Anderson looked at his phone and blinked. Then he started cursing violently under his breath.
"Sometimes I really hate my judgement," he said. Clarence narrowed his eyes.
"What did you do, Trooper?"
The trooper glanced at his phone, then at Clarence, then back at his phone. "Promise you won't fire me," he said, eyes focused on his phone.
"I can't, can't promise that. Can't promise that," responded Clarence.
"Fuck." Trooper Anderson took a breath. "I might. Might have put it on PHO?"
It took Clarence several seconds to stop himself from strangling Anderson. This nobody thought he could fuck up his project and get away with it?
He needed to play damage control. Damage control, quick. Control the damage!.
"Where did you put it?" asked Clarence.
"Uh, PHO Main?" said Anderson. Clarence swore. That was the most trafficked section.
"Subforum?" asked Clarence.
"Humor, I think."
"What account did you post it on?"
"Not my Verified PRT one."
Clarence breathed a little. Okay. "Okay. Okay, that's fine. We can spin it so that someone else, a, a teacher or someone posted it." This was salvageable, but it wasn't great.
Trooper Anderson relaxed visibly. "Does this mean I'm not getting fired?" he asked, smiling weakly at Clarence.
"No, you are absolutely getting fired."
"Fuck."
-----------------------------------------------------
As Clarence checked his phone a few minutes later, he was pleased to note that reception was actually mostly positive to the meme. People seemed eager for any news about the cape who fell from the sky, and seeing that he was hanging out with a group of elementary-school kids had raised a minor fervor on PHO of people clamoring to see the new Ward.
Some of the comments worried Clarence, though:
Not for the first time, Clarence was very happy Herobrine couldn't use the internet.
But there was some good points being raised. People asking if this was the new Ward, if this lined up with the rumors of someone fighting Lost Garden. Using a series of dummy accounts, Clarence shifted the conversation towards positive speculation, like the parahuman's potential powerset and Wards reveal date.
As he did his job, Clarence began to consider what some people were saying. They wanted to see Herobrine. Was that a good idea? They already knew what he looked like, but he was still officially on punishment duty.
Clarence thought about it.
On one hand, Herobrine basically wasn't doing anything. He couldn't actually man the console when he didn't actually have hands. Piggot would have called it a "waste of resources."
On the other hand...
"Kiddos and gamer girls, we're just about wrapping this up now, so I just want, like, a general consensus. Do you actually, like, enjoy this kind of style of reading? Because I'm looking around and you don't seem to be that engaged."
There was a pause.
"Like, at all."
Dead silence. Even the teachers looked a little shocked at the Ward's words.
Then one kid broke the silence, shouting, "You're scary!"
After that, the floodgates opened. Kids were screaming, a few stood up and tried to start running around, teachers were frantically trying to wrangle their kids, and somehow Herobrine looked hopelessly, hopelessly lost. He walked over to Clarence.
"Did I fuck up?" he asked. Unfortunately, he seemed to have forgotten that his voice wasn't actually attached to his body, and the vulgarity was broadcast at maximum volume from the speaker sitting near where he had been reading.
About half of the kids started giggling. "He said a bad wo-ord!"
Clarence looked at Herobrine. "Please don't say anything else. This situation is pretty bad right now."
Herobrine's dead, pixelated eyes stared back at him.
Then he nodded, and Clarence relaxed a little bit. "Okay. Meet me in my office in an hour, for now, just, just go."
Herobrine looked at the kids, and then at Clarence, and sprint-jumped away.
-----------------------------------------------------
At around 4PM, Herobrine entered Clarence's office.
"You, you left your comm in the room with the kids," said Clarence.
"I realized that," said the device on Clarence's desk.
"You didn't go back for it," said Clarence, looking at the Ward's pixelated face.
"I didn't."
Clarence tried to stare down Herobrine, but he couldn't find the energy to do so. He sighed.
"Sit down, if you're able to," he said, gesturing to a chair.
Herobrine walked over and did that weird squatting thing he did.
"I'm going to start by saying that this, this was a disaster, and it's mostly your fault."
There was a moment as Herobrine processed this.
"Okay," responded Herobrine. "That's understandable."
Somehow this wasn't what Clarence expected to hear. He blinked at Herobrine.
"No snarky remark?" asked Clarence. "No, no witticism?"
A pause. Then:
"No. But you get an apology."
Clarence gestured for him to continue.
"I'm sorry. I don't know why I tried to read the book in the way I did. It didn't work, and I blame my communication problems and myself."
Herobrine paused for a few seconds.
"It was absolutely my fault for swearing. I had a severe and continual lapse in judgement, and I don't expect to be forgiven. I'm just here to apologize."
Clarence sighed. "Herobrine, I don't know how able you are to browse the internet. But one of our troopers, who has since been discharged, made an image macro mocking you, and posted it online."
"So I heard," said Herobrine.
Clarence continued speaking. "It, it went viral in cape enthusiast circles, and people online have been, been clamoring for your public reveal. Now, I've given, given it some thought, and I believe I have a solution that both satisfies the conditions of your punishment and allows for the public to get a glimpse of you in action."
He paused. Herobrine didn't seem to move, excepting that weird thing he did with his arms going slightly out to the sides and slightly back in.
"I am offering you an opportunity to build whatever you want in the area near where the rig was."
Herobrine still didn't move. Clarence's eyebrow twitched. "Herobrine, I said--" he began, but was interrupted by the text-to-speech device.
"Mr. Williams, I would be honored to build something in that location," it buzzed. "When can I start?"
Clarence Williams took a deep breath. "Tomorrow," he exhaled. "Don't fuck it up."
-----------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------
A/N: This was the longest I've ever spent on a single chapter. This chapter was really experimental, in a number of ways. It has an alternate PoV for the first time, it has an OC in a starring role for the entire chapter length, and it has PHO interspersed, rather than an entire section. I also play with fonts for the first time in this fic. Don't worry, it's not permanent. The only reason it's there at all is because I want to show clearly that Herobrine's voice sounds extremely different, and Clarence obviously can't see Herobrine's chat logs when he's standing at the opposite end of a room.
We're nearing the endgame. Only six or so chapters to go!
For those of you who want more "Minecraft-y" action, that is the next chapter. Do not worry! Mining and crafting will occur.
Also, try and spot the Logan Paul reference.
Special thanks to @Akallas von Aerok over on SB for helping with grammer and spulling, as well as word choice here and there. A few others helped out with minor things for this chap, and if you want to be credited, DM me on Discord.
Also, huge huge thanks to @themanwhowas for helping me with the concept for this chapter months ago. If you haven't read his fic HOTSWAP yet, it's complete! One of the modern Wormfic classics.
As always, thanks for reading, and be absolutely sure to leave a comment! I read every last one of them
Hand covering two-thirds of his face, Clarence peeked through his fingers just to make sure that what he was seeing was, in fact, happening.
"That's not my superhero," droned the monotone voice of Kid Win's comm. "His cape is too fluffy. So, now, whoever has the book, you can feel the cape, and see that it is, in fact, very fluffy. There you go."
The blocky figure of Herobrine stood there, sentinel-like, staring over the kids. Sure, he made an effort. When the text was being read, he nodded, as if talking. He'd walk back and forth, and gesture vaguely in the direction of the child holding the story. The only issue?
The kids did not like it. Not at all.
One kid burst into tears as Herobrine looked at him.
Over the years, as Clarence had risen through the ranks, he'd heard about all sorts of different plans to make capes more accepted in society. For the normal, human capes, these plans had worked wonders. The last organized general anti-cape group disbanded in 2006, a little after Cornea had died. But the Case 53 efforts had been more... slow-going.
Weld was a win, though. Was being the operative word, because after something happened downtown (Clarence was away visiting his cousin in Philadelphia at the time), he and a lot of others of his kind had left the Protectorate, taking decades of progress with him.
When he'd received news of Herobrine joining the Wards, Clarence was genuinely excited about a new cape for the first time in years. The retro aesthetic, if a little childish, had infinite potential. Why the parahuman had decided to dress in what looked to him in the photos as cardboard boxes, he didn't know, but capes were by definition an odd bunch.
Then when Herobrine had walked into his office and it turned out he literally was a series of floating colored cuboids, all of Clarence's dreams had been thrown away with his sweat-covered handkerchief.
Herobrine wasn't a new hero with a cool sense of style. He was an annoying idiot with a dumb sense of humor who had signed up for the Wards because they gave him a free voicebox.
So, Clarence had decided to schedule him for this PR event. Was it petty? Yes. But he also did legitimately want to see how Herobrine would react to being faced with a crowd. In some ways, children were both easier and harder to deal with than a press conference.
"That's not my superhero," continued Herobrine. "Her helmet is too shiny. Ooh, try not to get blinded, kiddos. That's a bonafide LED in there."
Clarence had figured out pretty quickly Herobrine tended on the "bad with kids" side of things.
As Clarence tried not to visibly facepalm too hard, the security guard next to him elbowed him.
"Hey," said the guard.
Clarence glanced at the guard's breastplate. Trooper Anderson nudged Clarence again.
"Hey," said Anderson. "I made something."
He had pulled out a smartphone while he nudged Clarence. Anderson navigated to the gallery app and scrolled down to the most recent image. Tapping on it, he turned his phone sideways, and the image filled the screen.
It was an image of Herobrine with the kids. He stood over them, looking like more like a cardboard statue than a superhero. The kids were visibly upset. The caption was written on the split between the bottom and the top:
"THIS JUST IN: KIDS DON'T LIKE PLAYING WITH BLOCKS ANYMORE"
"BOTTOM TEXT"
Clarence was less than excited by the meme.
"You, you should probably delete that," he whispered.
"What?" said Anderson. "Why?"
Clarence took a moment to formulate a response. "As the man currently in charge of the Brockton PR department, I am telling you you should delete that. It's detrimental to the whole operation we're doing here."
Anderson looked at his phone and blinked. Then he started cursing violently under his breath.
"Sometimes I really hate my judgement," he said. Clarence narrowed his eyes.
"What did you do, Trooper?"
The trooper glanced at his phone, then at Clarence, then back at his phone. "Promise you won't fire me," he said, eyes focused on his phone.
"I can't, can't promise that. Can't promise that," responded Clarence.
"Fuck." Trooper Anderson took a breath. "I might. Might have put it on PHO?"
It took Clarence several seconds to stop himself from strangling Anderson. This nobody thought he could fuck up his project and get away with it?
He needed to play damage control. Damage control, quick. Control the damage!.
"Where did you put it?" asked Clarence.
"Uh, PHO Main?" said Anderson. Clarence swore. That was the most trafficked section.
"Subforum?" asked Clarence.
"Humor, I think."
"What account did you post it on?"
"Not my Verified PRT one."
Clarence breathed a little. Okay. "Okay. Okay, that's fine. We can spin it so that someone else, a, a teacher or someone posted it." This was salvageable, but it wasn't great.
Trooper Anderson relaxed visibly. "Does this mean I'm not getting fired?" he asked, smiling weakly at Clarence.
"No, you are absolutely getting fired."
"Fuck."
-----------------------------------------------------
As Clarence checked his phone a few minutes later, he was pleased to note that reception was actually mostly positive to the meme. People seemed eager for any news about the cape who fell from the sky, and seeing that he was hanging out with a group of elementary-school kids had raised a minor fervor on PHO of people clamoring to see the new Ward.
Some of the comments worried Clarence, though:
►Thor4269
Replied On Jun 21st 2011:
We sure that's not a cardboard cutout becuase that looks like a carboard cutout
►exes4eyes
Replied On Jun 21st 2011:
Forget cardboard, what the fuck is on his shirt? Looks like someone vomited square-shaped bodily fluids on it. Jesus.
Replied On Jun 21st 2011:
We sure that's not a cardboard cutout becuase that looks like a carboard cutout
►exes4eyes
Replied On Jun 21st 2011:
Forget cardboard, what the fuck is on his shirt? Looks like someone vomited square-shaped bodily fluids on it. Jesus.
Not for the first time, Clarence was very happy Herobrine couldn't use the internet.
But there was some good points being raised. People asking if this was the new Ward, if this lined up with the rumors of someone fighting Lost Garden. Using a series of dummy accounts, Clarence shifted the conversation towards positive speculation, like the parahuman's potential powerset and Wards reveal date.
As he did his job, Clarence began to consider what some people were saying. They wanted to see Herobrine. Was that a good idea? They already knew what he looked like, but he was still officially on punishment duty.
Clarence thought about it.
On one hand, Herobrine basically wasn't doing anything. He couldn't actually man the console when he didn't actually have hands. Piggot would have called it a "waste of resources."
On the other hand...
"Kiddos and gamer girls, we're just about wrapping this up now, so I just want, like, a general consensus. Do you actually, like, enjoy this kind of style of reading? Because I'm looking around and you don't seem to be that engaged."
There was a pause.
"Like, at all."
Dead silence. Even the teachers looked a little shocked at the Ward's words.
Then one kid broke the silence, shouting, "You're scary!"
After that, the floodgates opened. Kids were screaming, a few stood up and tried to start running around, teachers were frantically trying to wrangle their kids, and somehow Herobrine looked hopelessly, hopelessly lost. He walked over to Clarence.
"Did I fuck up?" he asked. Unfortunately, he seemed to have forgotten that his voice wasn't actually attached to his body, and the vulgarity was broadcast at maximum volume from the speaker sitting near where he had been reading.
About half of the kids started giggling. "He said a bad wo-ord!"
Clarence looked at Herobrine. "Please don't say anything else. This situation is pretty bad right now."
Herobrine's dead, pixelated eyes stared back at him.
Then he nodded, and Clarence relaxed a little bit. "Okay. Meet me in my office in an hour, for now, just, just go."
Herobrine looked at the kids, and then at Clarence, and sprint-jumped away.
-----------------------------------------------------
At around 4PM, Herobrine entered Clarence's office.
"You, you left your comm in the room with the kids," said Clarence.
"I realized that," said the device on Clarence's desk.
"You didn't go back for it," said Clarence, looking at the Ward's pixelated face.
"I didn't."
Clarence tried to stare down Herobrine, but he couldn't find the energy to do so. He sighed.
"Sit down, if you're able to," he said, gesturing to a chair.
Herobrine walked over and did that weird squatting thing he did.
"I'm going to start by saying that this, this was a disaster, and it's mostly your fault."
There was a moment as Herobrine processed this.
"Okay," responded Herobrine. "That's understandable."
Somehow this wasn't what Clarence expected to hear. He blinked at Herobrine.
"No snarky remark?" asked Clarence. "No, no witticism?"
A pause. Then:
"No. But you get an apology."
Clarence gestured for him to continue.
"I'm sorry. I don't know why I tried to read the book in the way I did. It didn't work, and I blame my communication problems and myself."
Herobrine paused for a few seconds.
"It was absolutely my fault for swearing. I had a severe and continual lapse in judgement, and I don't expect to be forgiven. I'm just here to apologize."
Clarence sighed. "Herobrine, I don't know how able you are to browse the internet. But one of our troopers, who has since been discharged, made an image macro mocking you, and posted it online."
"So I heard," said Herobrine.
Clarence continued speaking. "It, it went viral in cape enthusiast circles, and people online have been, been clamoring for your public reveal. Now, I've given, given it some thought, and I believe I have a solution that both satisfies the conditions of your punishment and allows for the public to get a glimpse of you in action."
He paused. Herobrine didn't seem to move, excepting that weird thing he did with his arms going slightly out to the sides and slightly back in.
"I am offering you an opportunity to build whatever you want in the area near where the rig was."
Herobrine still didn't move. Clarence's eyebrow twitched. "Herobrine, I said--" he began, but was interrupted by the text-to-speech device.
"Mr. Williams, I would be honored to build something in that location," it buzzed. "When can I start?"
Clarence Williams took a deep breath. "Tomorrow," he exhaled. "Don't fuck it up."
-----------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------
A/N: This was the longest I've ever spent on a single chapter. This chapter was really experimental, in a number of ways. It has an alternate PoV for the first time, it has an OC in a starring role for the entire chapter length, and it has PHO interspersed, rather than an entire section. I also play with fonts for the first time in this fic. Don't worry, it's not permanent. The only reason it's there at all is because I want to show clearly that Herobrine's voice sounds extremely different, and Clarence obviously can't see Herobrine's chat logs when he's standing at the opposite end of a room.
We're nearing the endgame. Only six or so chapters to go!
For those of you who want more "Minecraft-y" action, that is the next chapter. Do not worry! Mining and crafting will occur.
Also, try and spot the Logan Paul reference.
Special thanks to @Akallas von Aerok over on SB for helping with grammer and spulling, as well as word choice here and there. A few others helped out with minor things for this chap, and if you want to be credited, DM me on Discord.
Also, huge huge thanks to @themanwhowas for helping me with the concept for this chapter months ago. If you haven't read his fic HOTSWAP yet, it's complete! One of the modern Wormfic classics.
As always, thanks for reading, and be absolutely sure to leave a comment! I read every last one of them
Last edited:
Found the reference, it was my first thought when reading it.
Also yay building time!
- Location
- England
You know what that trooper did was totally unforgivable.
Rot in Meme hell, Trooper Anderson.
Seriously, though. It was mostly PR guy's fault. What did he think was going to happen? Did he even ask Herobrine what he was going to do or did he just say "Right, we're off to do a show and tell with some kids. Think fast."?
Dolly Fail Fail
Boss Leader
- Location
- Within dreams and memories
I'm pretty sure the message explicitly said that he would be reading to them, would have to check though.
- Location
- England
That actually makes it worse. Presumably the PR guy _has_ heard Herobrine 'speak' before.