Chapter Text
It's Noob who finally asks, one evening between rounds, staring up at Dusekkar with the guileless directness only Noob seems to manage.
"Why is your head a p-pumpkin?"
Dusekkar, seated in his usual armchair by the fire, considers the question with more gravity than it perhaps warranted. The fire behind his eyes flickers, softening at the edges, the way it does when he's about to tell a story rather than issue a proclamation.
"A fair question, long deserved of answer true," he says. "Sit, then, Noob, I'll tell what came to pass, and who."
Chance, nearby, perks up at the promise of a story and wanders over uninvited, dragging a second crate along with them.
"This a good one?"
"That," Dusekkar says, "depends upon your taste, for some truths bring joy, and some lay waste."
It was early yet in Robloxia's short history: young enough that seasons still felt like novelties, the wonders of the sweet flowers in spring and the chilly nights of winter. And Roblox HQ, ever eager to seem less like a glass tower full of gods and code and more like a place mortals might recognize, decided the season called for decoration.
Halloween, Builderman had announced, striding through the halls with the particular enthusiasm of a man who'd clearly researched the holiday thoroughly and enjoyed every minute of it. Y'all are gonna love this one. It's pretty creative, if I'd say so myself. Bit of spook, bit of fun. Get some pumpkins in here, cobwebs make the place feel a touch more homey.
Dusekkar, newly arrived among the admins (as all were, actually,) and still learning the shape of mortal custom, took the assignment with the seriousness he applied to everything. Others simply bought their pumpkins pre-carved, didn't bother carving at all, or had some mortal gift it to them, Dusekkar disappeared for the better part of a week and returned having taught himself the craft entirely by hand via proper tools, proper technique, the whole discipline of it, studied the way one might study a spell.
He was, if he did say so himself, rather good at it.
Every year after, it became something of a personal rite. A new pumpkin, a new face carved into it, each one more intricate than the last or with a different expression, sat on his table during the festive season. Until one particular Halloween, some years in, he carved something he could only describe, even now, as correct. Every line where it should be. A shape that felt less designed than discovered.
He brought it straight to Builderman's office, holding it out with both hands like an offering.
Would you look at that, Builderman said, turning it over slow, whistling low through his teeth. Dusek, that there's a genuine work of art. Shame these things don't keep.
"A shame indeed," Dusekkar murmured, staring at it. "A shame that beauty ever must recede."
He didn't sleep that night. Didn't intend to, really, he just sat with the pumpkin by his nightstand and the problem of its impermanence, turning old workings over in his mind the way you'd turn a puzzle box, until something clicked into place that probably shouldn't have.
His own head, after all, had always been flame. It had been, since before pumpkins, since before Halloween, a low and steady fire that never asked to be carried by anything in particular. It occurred to him, somewhere past midnight, that flame doesn't actually need a face. It simply goes wherever it's given room to go.
The enchantment wasn't difficult, in the end. Preservation, mostly, a ward against rot, against the season passing, against the ordinary tragedy of a pumpkin's short and given life, and a fire immunity, similar to other objects enchanted with flame, except this one was meant to withstand it than wield it.
However, he simply didn't stop at preserve.
He walked into HQ the next morning wearing it.
Builderman, to his eternal credit, did not so much as blink. He just looked up from his desk, took in the sight of Dusekkar's grinning, glowing pumpkin head, flame-antlers curling where regular flame might once have been, and nodded slow, like a man confirming something he'd half-expected all along.
Well, he said, leaning back in his chair. Can't say I saw that comin', but I can't say it don't suit you neither.
"A fitting crown, I thought, for one who burns," Dusekkar said, entirely straight-faced. "A face that lasts, however each year turns."
Builderman just laughed, long and easy, and waved him off to work.
"And so it's stayed," Dusekkar finishes, back in the present, tapping two knuckles lightly against his own pumpkin skull. "One face, unchanging, kept through fire and time. A vanity, perhaps, though I'd not call it crime."
Chance stares at him for a long moment. "You just... decided to become a pumpkin. Permanently. Because you liked how one turned out."
"I did."
"That's insane."
"That," Dusekkar agrees, entirely unbothered, "is fair."
Noob, for their part, simply reaches up and pats the pumpkin once, gently, the same careful way they'd pet the cress sprouts that had grown in them once, and Dusekkar, admin, god, formally-spoken relic of an older Robloxia, allows it without complaint.