Chapter Text
Message Log [ 1 ]:
____
ORBY
[ “Kyu, I need a status report.” ]
[ “There’s a really odd bug happening in one of the games I was observing, it’s named ‘get another snack at 3am’. The code is deleting itself for some reason, need some help dealing with this one.” ]
[ “And also I found a lost player in the game, they seem confused on what’s happening.” ]
[ “Please respond soon, thank you.” ]
ORBY
Reply to: And also I found a lost player in the game, they seem confused on what’s happening.
[ “Slight add on to previous statement, the little one’s name is Nooby. I’m currently going over the game’s code to check on what’s happening while he rests, I’ll question them later.” ]
ORBY
[ “Kyu? You haven’t read any of my messages… are you okay?” ]
[ “I hope you are, but the situation I’m facing is getting more serious.” ]
[ “If you don’t respond soon, I may have to do something drastic.” ]
[ “...I know you would hate me for that, but it’s going to be necessary if you don’t answer my messages.” ]
[ “Answer as quick as you can, please.” ]
ORBY
[ “The world is falling apart, I don’t think anything I’m applying is working.” ]
[ “It’s getting increasingly worse, and parts of the world are getting deleted every second. The code is the most unstable that I’ve ever seen in a game so far.” ]
[ “I don’t think I can stay here much longer, but the player and game itself could get corrupted and deleted soon if I don’t do something.” ]
[ “Kyu.” ]
[ “Kyu please.” ]
[ “Please answer me.” ]
[ “I need you.” ]
ORBY
[ “I don’t have a choice.” ]
[ “Kyu, if you see this, please settle the rest of the game’s code that I was able to preserve in the data store when you can. I don’t think I will be able to respond back if I do this, so it’s necessary.” ]
[ “...You did say to prioritize the player’s wellbeing right? I’m doing this for the sake of the game, for the player.” ]
[ “Please forgive me for doing this.” ]
[ “I really don’t have a choice.” ]
[ “I know I can get through this, I can.” ]
[ “You have to trust me.” ]
[ “I’m sorry for breaking my promise again.” ]
[ “Respond soon, thank you.” ]
Message Log [ 2 ]:
____
KYU
[ “Orby?? Sorry my message commands didn’t want to load at all during my session, couldn’t see yours either.” ]
[ “Are you okay? Hello??” ]
[ “Don’t leave me hanging here.” ]
[ “Seriously.” ]
[ “I’ll go check which game that is, I didn’t think monitoring would get this bad, apologies.” ]
KYU
[ “The game it- it’s disabled, what the hell.” ]
[ “You were able to restore a bunch of the code to the save data luckily, but where did YOU go?” ]
[ “I can’t track your ID or data anywhere, what’s going on?” ]
[ “Are you in an experience?” ]
[ “Orby?” ]
[ “Orby, respond to me please.” ]
[ “Say something.” ]
[ “Hello???” ]
[ “Please don’t tell me that you’re doing what I think you’re doing.” ]
[ “ORBY?” ]
KYU
[ “I’ve searched through almost every single file that I can reach, I still can’t locate you.” ]
[ "I still can't track you down." ]
[ “You’re making me nervous.” ]
[ “...Orby.” ]
[ “I really hope you didn’t do anything extreme.” ]
[ “Not again.” ]
[ “You’re making me worried sick, there’s no trace of your presence anywhere in the studio.” ]
[ “Orby, answer me.” ]
[ “Give me a reaction. Anything.” ]
[ “Just tell me that you’re okay.” ]
[ “Please.” ]
[ “Please…” ]
Was the last thing Kyu typed out into the panel before rushing back into the studio. A place beyond the skybox, beyond the prying eyes of players so she wouldn’t have to fear any exploiters invading a part of Robloxia’s moderation. She knew that well, but her worries over the disappearance of Orby overwhelmed any other thoughts she was planning to have.
God, how could she let her guard down like this?
Panels and overviews of almost billions of games and experiences appeared in the empty void that she considered a room as she entered. Kyu let herself float up before reaching a set of worlds that she had allowed Orby to try bug-fixing for, each one highlighted in her vision.
Only one of them had an error.
“ ‘get another snack at 3am’, huh. ” Her eyes narrowed to the subject of the problem, at least supposedly. It had been disabled as soon as she was done updating the game she was in previously for ‘insufficient data’. She had already analyzed through every single file, every line of code, every model she could possibly find within the game in its buggy state.
But nothing. Absolutely nothing came of it.
No sign of Orby.
Not even the system could find them.
Kyu felt cold, a continuous sensation where her body felt frosted over despite the empty air around her and even with a coat at least covering her arms, it felt horrible. It was the kind of feeling you would get when you realize there’s nothing you can do in a situation.
A hopeless feeling.
It was because she truly, truly had no clues this time. No leads, not even the data that Orby was able to recover told her anything about their whereabouts.
She really… didn’t know what to do.
The cube was known as the responsible one, the one who knew what entries to write, what solution to use to patch up bugs, how to implement updates.
Of course the first thing to stump her was her partner’s disappearance.
What was she supposed to do? She couldn’t just report to the other admins about this, this issue should be solved by her. Her negligence caused this, Kyu has to be responsible, one way or another.
Suddenly, during her heavy overthinking, a new error popped up. It wasn’t from the buggy game however.
[Game sent an error: Memory overload. The current data store is too small to contain new data. Error Code: 529.]
Get a snack at 4am.
It encountered a data store error.
“Again?! I swear to-” Kyu was about to start complaining before shutting herself up quickly, her eyes widening in realization.
This… this could be a lead to where Orby was.
Holy ####.
With no hesitation, the cube got up from her slumped position in the void, morphing back into her, well, cube form before entering the game once more.
At least this time it wasn’t locked by a stupid shopkeeper.
Back to the present, where Kyu stood in the middle of the living room, sight placed onto the four below her.
“Kyu! Thank goodness you’re here!—”
“What did you guys do now.”
The cube sent a glare down towards both of the npcs, clearly moving her stare towards Cashier’s side. The shopkeeper could notice, and he mentally noted that she was NOT in a good mood at all if she was already having thoughts of blaming him out of all things.
Basically like a warning almost.
“...What? No, we didn’t do anything, I’m very sure that is not the case.”
Dummy firmly spoke, side-eying the two players behind them.
“Ugh, listen, I don’t have the patience to deal with any excuses.”
Yep, he knew it, Cashier silently thought.
“The error clearly says here that there’s a data overflow issue with the game, and I can also very clearly see what caused it.”
Kyu’s sharp gaze suddenly shifted to Nooby, making the blue baseball capped player flinch in fear.
That cube person… looks so similar to Orby, except they were a cube.
Could it be?
He nervously backed up from the rug, taking the attention of the player next to him.
The testing dummy looked back, realizing what Kyu was referring to and immediately raised their arms in defense. Cashier crossed his arms, not bothering to look up at the cube.
“About that player specifically, we don’t know how he got in here okay? He just suddenly… appeared. His data is like from a whole different game and the endings got cloned to his save data since the game registered him as a new player!”
Having to explain everything they had said previously was definitely not something Dummy wanted to do, but it was clear they didn’t have a choice at this moment. It’s not like Cashier was any help right now.
“And exactly, who, was responsible for achieving those endings?”
Another stern look and Nooby was already about to no-clip through the floor. He didn’t like this, the air was tense enough and Kyu was just adding on to the tension.
“uh-” Cashier tried to speak but cut himself off from Kyu's presence. It felt like she was staring at him, but he didn't bother to check.
In response, Player moved in front of Nooby, blocking him from any closer looks or words Kyu was about to give to him. They gave a narrow stare towards the cube, trying to signal that it wasn’t his fault and it was technically theirs since they were the one to suggest doing endings in the first place. If only they didn’t accidentally shred the rest of their papers in the breakfast machine, communicating would be so much easier if Player still had them.
They mentally facepalmed.
“...Well, right now nothing bad really seems to be happening.”
Cashier spoke up, finally deciding to properly acknowledge the cube in the room instead of constantly looking down at the very interesting floor.
“The only real weird thing is none of the items resetting I guess.”
“And the timer.” Dummy added on.
“Aaaaand the timer.” And the shopkeeper repeated it back.
“Can’t you just reset the game then? Doesn’t seem that bad honestly.”
The testing dummy shrugged, before noticing the cube start to tremble slightly as a reaction. It was hard to notice, but they had been staring at them for way too long during her sudden appearance that somehow not noticing would be impossible anyways.
“...”
“...” Everyone in the room went silent, the shopkeeper being the next one to notice the odd look on the cube’s face.
“...Orby’s h-here.”
Her voice had a stutter, something both NPCs had never heard before. Kyu looked… scared? relieved? A mix between the two? Something was wrong, they could feel it. The way she was already looking around in a new-found nervousness definitely said something.
Nooby’s thoughts went still at the mention of Orby’s name.
“Uh, we didn’t see Orby here earlier, not at the store either. And before you even try to say what I think you’re going to say—”
Cashier shot down Kyu’s attempt to glare at him at the mention of Orby. She’s jumping to conclusions that quick, jeez.
“—No I didn’t take them away this time.”
“Okay.” A blank response came from her mouth, command panels suddenly appearing around her robloxian form as she seemingly was going through code again, completely absorbed in the action.
“I still can’t just ‘reset’ the game, Dummy.” She went back to address the previous question.
“Why not?”
“I already said this, ORBY IS HERE. They’re within the code somewhere in the game, I checked. I can’t just RESET the goddamn game, that would potentially erase them from both the system and Robloxia itself! Do you WANT me to risk another life being taken again?”
The two players winced at the mention of erasing data, looks like both of them were familiar with the idea of that, Cashier noted once more as he turned towards them. When can this whole situation be over… The dialogue itself from this whole thing was probably longer than whatever that Finale thing was at this point.
…Scratch that, that conversation was probably way longer than this one.
“Maybe you really want me to delete the save data.”
Despite being a murmur, everyone fell silent in response, the air tingled with a looming sense of dread. Kyu wasn’t normally like this, at least that’s what Dummy thought to themselves, would she really go that far?
“You.”
Kyu suddenly floated down towards Nooby, pushing Player away from where they tried to block the cube from him.
“I can sense that you’re from the game that started all of this, that ‘get another snack at 3am’ one. What did you do?!”
“Hey hey, Kyu- Let’s not blame them so quickly, even Nooby said that he was conf-” Dummy attempted to diffuse the sudden rise of anger from the cube.
“I’m not talking to you, Dummy.”
“ I- ”
“You can respond, I know you can.”
She turned back to Nooby instead, and said player was already trying to back away from Kyu, fear written all over them. His head hurt, none of this felt right. What did he do? Did he cause this? Was he the reason why Orby’s gone?
“You have a chat.”
“Say something.”
…Orby’s still here, she said that earlier, but it didn’t stop the growing train of bad thoughts running through Nooby’s mind. What was he supposed to say? He only just realized that he was stuck in a loop at least a few hours ago in his original game, why was the world throwing everything at him again?
“Just say something god damn it.”
Both NPCs were too afraid to speak up, forcing themselves to watch. Player attempted to reach out, silently regretting not doing it sooner. Why was no one helping him?
“...”
Nooby’s hand reached up and clutched his hoodie tightly, his mind making him barely able to speak. His throat closed up on him from the stress, yet he had already backed up completely flat onto the wall behind him with nowhere to go.
He felt scared.
Again.
The world darkened in his vision, he saw the ground glitch and twist and deform and contort into something incomprehensible till he couldn’t take it anymore.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No nonononononono nonono-
He suddenly pushed the cube away forcefully as she got closer, breaking into a hurried sprint out the open entrance of the house while almost tripping on misplaced soda cans.
It was just like when Orby found him. Just that this time he felt even more in danger.
“NOOBY!?”
Without thinking, the shopkeeper immediately ran after the scared player, following behind while unintentionally slamming the door behind him. The three people still left in the house stood in silent shock and concern.
“Hey- Where does he think he's going-”
“-Kyu! Uhm, how about we just discuss what's going on between both of us for now? You're being a bit too serious with all of this, y'know…"
Dummy brought up a suggestion to the cube to hopefully pull her away from trying to chase after the poor player, while Player attempted to peek from behind them, as if trying to say: ‘I'm here too.’
The last part was said under their breath to hopefully not trigger the cube again.
“... I guess that's fine for now. But make it quick.”
Her gaze snapped from the wall towards the two other people in the room, awaiting their conversation.
Cashier panted for air as he got back to the convenience store. Running was not something he expected to do today, but here he is, wasting energy just to run after a player out of all things.
Was it frustrating? Yes.
… was he doing this because he was concerned for once? Yeah.
He noticed that Nooby had probably gone inside already and quickly followed as well, the jingle of the bell from the door going unheard despite breaking the long silence.
“Nooby? You in here bud?” The shopkeeper unintentionally used the nickname that he would normally use for Player, but that didn't exactly matter now.
His eyes looked around the dimly lit store, nothing really changed if he could put it lightly.
And also if he didn't address the obvious worsening glitching of his break timer.
Then yeah, everything was right where it should be.
Except for Nooby, who was pressing himself against the corner nearby the walk-in freezer as if trying to hide himself, arms wrapped around his legs and covering his face from view. Cashier could tell that he was crying though.
“... Hey.”
He mumbled, slowly walking closer to where he was behind the counter. He pressed himself against the wall similarly to Nooby, slumping down to the ground close by to the saddened player.
How does someone even comfort other people? The shopkeeper wasn't familiar with the idea of helping others feel better, he had kind of learnt from experience that most people wouldn't give a damn even if you were at your worst.
Kyu's words from where she finally got through the lock he placed on the game came back to him, and he silently hummed in discomfort. That whole conversation was a lot, even he wasn't sure whether he had taken it in its entirety into consideration.
Well, he already did actually.
The whole ‘I'm just a cashier and nothing more' part obviously.
Which was why he wasn't sure on what to say to Nooby. Why did he even run after him anyways?
Player would be better fit for this, he can't comfort someone he JUST met.
Yet despite those thoughts, the shopkeeper raised his arm and gently rested it onto the player's shoulder. He felt him wince in response, but slowly lowered his guard.
Progress, he assumed.
“I'm guessing you're not feeling good, I get it.”
No he didn't, that was probably a horrible thing to say.
“Kyu can be a bit stern at times, seen that before personally. But try not to think about it too much, you're not the main reason she's mad. Plus, I'm not even completely sure why she’s this upset today.”
Nooby lifted up his head slightly to look at the shopkeeper, tears catching the glint of the ceiling lights above the two as they trailed down his face.
“... mhm.” The player didn't sound convinced.
A beat had passed, and none of them said a word. Until Nooby lifted an arm and grabbed onto Cashier's sleeve, making his eyes widen in confusion.
“i think it's my fault.” He whispered under his breath, yet the shopkeeper heard him clear as day.
“No it isn't..?”
“i saw orby. I saw them before, before I woke up here.”
Nooby continued on, narrating a story even he couldn't believe had happened to him only moments earlier.
“my game, I think, was falling apart. They wanted to save the game and me. But they're gone now and i don't know where they are.”
His head dropped back down onto his arms with a soft thud, while Cashier kept his arm on his shoulders as he took in the new information.
Oh.
Orby brought them here.
From the game Kyu was talking about.
“...oh.” The shopkeeper sighed at the realization.
“Well as you heard just now, Orby isn't gone yet. They're here somewhere.”
Cashier's thoughts trailed off for a moment before a tug from Nooby's side was brought to his attention.
“... how do you know about orby?”
“Uh, well, they came to our game actually because of a similar issue I guess. Except we had too much data because of the endings so they tried to be the data store.”
He cringed at the thought of how he handled the situation at the time before continuing.
“Our game got corrupted though from the excess data, and I kinda went overboard too during that.”
Cashier was NOT planning to explain that part.
“..But it's over now.”
“... Ouh.” The player tilted his head, the tears that used to be present on his face were dried up by now.
That's good.
“Feeling better?” The nod that came from Nooby made Cashier feel oddly warm. Wow, he actually did something useful for once after everything.
“Nice to know.”
He feels kind of bad for Nooby too, being taken out of your world and suddenly being blamed for something you didn't mean to do and couldn't control sucked.
The player attempted to stand up from his sitting position, Cashier following suit while also helping him get up. No signs of Dummy or Kyu anywhere, maybe they should head back to the house.
“Hey uh Nooby— “
Said player turned towards him.
“—how about we go back to Player's house?”
Nooby seemed to light up at the mention of Player's name, giving a thumbs up as a response while both of them left the space between the counter.
But as they were walking towards the exit, Nooby froze.
Their eyes dilated, and Cashier wasn't sure why.
“Buddy, you okay?”
He seemed so panicked all of a sudden. Why though? There was nothing happe-
Then the shopkeeper heard it.
Words from the house nearby even before they left the convenience store could already be heard, clearly coming from the cube.
The power of dialogue he guessed.
“I have searched EVERYWHERE, DUMMY. I REALLY TRIED, OKAY? You don't understand JUST HOW TERRIFIED I WAS WHEN I FOUND OUT-!”
Kyu was snapping. He had… never heard her be this upset over something, even when he pushed it during the data overload. He knows both him and Dummy had probably thought about it over and over when Kyu started explaining in the home, but hearing it from afar and seeing how different she was acting was uncanny.
It was as if she was the one who found out Orby went missing first, and went into a stage of panic because of it.
Nooby backed away, hands rushing to hug himself from fear.
…No, it's all his fault.
“The data from the duplicated endings, you're lucky there isn't one more, because if there was just one more this world would be turning into itself like an implosion.”
He caused this, he made this happen.
Both worlds was already in danger because of him.
Nooby was the one who caused this.
“Orby isn't safe. They are risking their life right now somewhere within the code or files of this game and I can't even do anything because of this stupid data overload.”
He's going to hurt someone just because he left his house.
None of this would have happened if he had just stayed inside.
None of this would be happening if he just stayed curious instead of leaving.
It's all his fault.
It's all his fault..
“Nooby- hey look at me- calm down—”
He can't even help them.
Why did he have to leave?
Why didn't he stay?
He made them upset.
Nooby's making things worse.
His head felt heavy, was it because of that data store thing? He wasn't sure, but the world started spinning in his vision before he could blink. It felt horrible.
The shopkeeper internally started panicking, which he rarely did in hindsight, but Nooby looked like he was about to pass out by now for some unknown reason. He approached him slowly, holding up his shoulders as an attempt to keep the player steady.
“Okay, uhm, god I really don't know what to-”
Nooby didn't focus on his words, more focused on the thought of staying far away from Kyu. Kyu wasn't even here, wasn’t even in the store, yet he felt… scared again.
Why can't he just go back..?
Go back home.
Home.
The vision of running down a road that lead to nothing.
Just run away from them.
Just run-
Just-
“wait where are you going-”
The player turned away from Cashier and ran towards the back of the counter again, but this time his hand frantically grabbed onto the door handle of what looked to be a tall metal door.
Nooby couldn't think straight, but curiosity took over his senses.
Cashier took a second to realize what the blue-capped player was about to do before-
“Wait don't–”
…
A loud shriek of metal scraping the ground pierced the silence of the convenience store and cut the shopkeeper off.
And Nooby disappeared into the walk-in freezer.
“...shoot.”
“I’m just- I’m just really worried okay. I know I was being too harsh, but that player could be my only lead in finding Orby.”
Kyu had a hand running through her hair after her previous shouting, letting out a heavy sigh as she leaned against the TV behind her. She had to manually turn that noisy screen off as the whole ending connected to it didn’t properly reset it back to normal. Which was related to the dilemma in front of her, of course.
“They mentioned him, his name specifically. It’s the same, plus their description sounded about right.”
“Hmm, I see, I see…”
Dummy was busy drinking some fake replica of a glass of orange juice in their hand as they listened to the cube’s rambles with mild intrigue on their face. Player guessed that they took it from that weird Void place that was used for errors, they didn’t know the testing dummy could just do that.
Listening to their conversation was boring.
At this point, they could just fall asleep right on the couch while listening to them, but something prevented the player from any attempt at sleeping. That sucks…
“Ugh, I wish I read their messages earlier, none of thing would have happened if—”
Player groaned in utter boredom, they already understood mostly what had happened through their conversation with Nooby before the NPCs came in and before a certain cube ruined the happy moment. They never knew that those admins could bring players from other games over, it was interesting since they’ve never heard it happen ever in the history of Robloxia.
Unless they weren’t well informed enough.
They wondered what the limit was to what both Orby and Kyu could do in a game, the only things that Player knew were just updating and bug-fixing. Why would they purposefully turn themselves into some random stud shapes anyways? What was the reason?
Was it like how demons disguise themselves to look innocent and normal to people, or like how angels are terrifying in their true form?
Well, one thing was obvious, their true forms were not scary, only slightly surprising that they had one in the first place.
…Oh, Player went completely lost in thought there, whoops.
Hey, why did they stop talking?
The player looked up, noticing how both Dummy and Kyu were just… frozen in place, standing still where they were beforehand.
That’s… not right, doesn’t that only happen when the game is about to kick them o-
Disconnected
You have been kicked by this experience or its moderators.
Moderation message: Memory limit reached.
(Error code: 413)