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“GUYS!”
The door to the lounge room burst open, slamming harshly against the wall and nearly cracking straight off its hinges. Everyone turned to the source of the noise with varying degrees of surprise.
“Fuckin’ what?” Baby called.
The figure in the doorway was panting heavily, their white half-mask slightly crooked. Despite this, the red markings on it seemed to glow brightly, and the shine in their eyes was unmistakable. Mew took a moment to regain their breath before shouting again.
“GUYS WE- WE-”
Unable to finish their sentence, Mew dashed over to the TV remote, snatching the device off the table and, ignoring the cries of anger, switched channels.
The giant flatscreen flickered for a brief moment before changing to…
Kudos: 966
For a long moment, the room was silent.
“Uh…” Kate tentatively broke the silence. “Mew, what exactly are we looking a-” Then the pieces started to fall in place. Her eyes widened. “...oh. Oh, Mew is that-?”
The masked person nodded almost frantically. “We- we hit- the fic-” They were practically hyperventilating at this point. “OBSF is two Kudos away from being Top Fic!”
Almost immediately after the words were uttered, there was a sound of splintering wood upstairs, like a door had just been flung off of its hinges. With a thunderous parade of steps down the stairs, Alex came barreling through the door and-
He promptly tripped onto his face, skidding along the floor until he came to rest in the middle of the room. Completely unfazed, the boy looked up, staring at the big, bold numbers displayed on the screen. “Holy-”
The lights suddenly flickered, interrupting Alex, but everyone else was too preoccupied with what was currently in front of them to notice. Nor did they notice the new addition standing in the middle of the room. Solar blinked several times, the 12 year-old turning their gaze to the screen, their impassive face a stark contrast to the energy in the rest of the room.
While all of this was going on, a black haired teenager, nicknamed Squish by the other tenants of the mansion, was sleeping peacefully… up until they were rudely woken by all the shouting and screaming coming from downstairs, that is. They grabbed their glasses, and pondered for a moment on whether to be a normal person and just go downstairs, or be unneededly extra and to crawl through the vents.
He naturally chose to be extra. Everything was going well in the vents, but something bad always had to happen, right? As he found the vent that leads to the lounge, he put his hands on top of the grating and peered down.
The metal let out a creak.
Before he knew it, the vent had given out from under him, sending him tumbling into the group he had intended to spy on. No one batted an eye, like teenagers falling out of the ventilation system was a common occurrence. Which, to be fair, it was, with how often complete chaos erupted around here. “Huh? What's happening guys?” The boy mumbled, dazed.
The amount of noise didn't sit well with someone in particular.
There was a small teen in the corner of the room, hand-in-hand, he had a comfortably-sized sketchbook and a feathered pen in his grasp. He seemed comfortable enough being overlooked, yet with his firm blue sweater and the pastel blue flower crown around his neck, it was quite hard not to notice his presence. He was humming a soft tune to himself, seeming calm despite the multitude of small, bean-looking sprouts coming out of his hair and arms. He felt the eyes on him when there were none, as in a quick jerky movement, he cocked his head up from his book and looked around.
His cheeks flushed lightly, realizing no one had been looking, and it was simply his imagination. He sighed softly, but took note of the small, discolored Pichu in front of him.
"Pi?" The tiny mouse felt the tension, and desired to break that. The pygmy, white-furred with brown patches on the tip of her ears and a smudge of oddly shaped brown fur under her head. The pokemon could be smug when she desired, yes, but she decided against it in the heat of the moment.
Blue, the boy in the corner, softly laughed. He was avoiding it all, again. "You're right, I shouldn't be here all by my lonesome. Sorry." He closed his sketchbook, placing the pen within his sleeve and tucking it away. Pichu chirped, hopping with small sparks of electricity emitting from her brown cheeks. The rodent jumped up from the floor, scaling the wall with enough momentum to hop on top of Blue's head, adjusting herself accordingly. The boy laughed, looking ahead to the source of the noise earlier. His eyes caught the familiar hue of a faint purple in the opposing corner, gazing upon it.
A spirit, one of purple essence, remained hovering in the far corner of the room. She seemed to be possessing some sort of device. However, she didn't even seem to notice anything strange or exciting… she was pretty distracted at the moment.
By what? Ah, honestly it was utter nonsense. But she was rather used to tuning out the chaos, despite it not being purposeful.
Speaking of Chaos, he was curiously missing from this excitement. Strange, where could he be?
In a room far-off from the others, a boy was sitting around, amongst what was practically a forest contained in the room. He was just making a mask, like always. He hadn't heard the commotion downstairs, as he was focused… and unobservant. However, as soon as he finished his mask, a personal favorite, he heard yelling. Great, never a dull moment around here…
Wandering down the halls of the mansion, he came across the room from where all the noise was coming from; of course, it was the one titled “actual-fic-speak”. A weird name for a room, but no one ever really questioned it. Sticking his head in to try to figure out what was going on didn’t prove to help him very much; mostly everyone was just screaming nonsense. He let out a soft sigh and took a step back. Yep, everything was normal. He decided to sit down and wait for them to settle down. That's when the blonde boy noticed something peculiar.
"Uh guys, where's Audio?" Chaos’ voice was soft in tone yet, even with all the anarchy and chaos that was currently happening, his low tone seemed to cut straight through the chatter.
Everything came to a halt.
"Wasn't he here about ten minutes ago?" The local bush spoke in equally low tone, trying to think of when was the last time their friend had been seen. Everyone in the room remained silent as they all simultaneously processed the words.
And then the panic set in.
“Where is he?” Mew fretted. “He should be here for this!”
“Uhm… what- what is this , exactly?” Chaos cut in.
Completely ignoring him, everyone started dashing around the building floor, looking everywhere for the one person who was missing. They opened closets, checked the basement, and in the cupboards. Suddenly, the lounge was empty, leaving Chaos alone in the middle of the room. Sighing to himself, he plopped down on the now-empty couch, “I swear, isn’t there someone who’s supposed to know all this?”
Turning back to the TV, Chaos searched for the remote. Not being able to find it, he sighed even deeper. “Auto! Get in here!”
With a soft whirring sound, the small, hastily-made robot wheeled into the room. It wasn’t anything grand, just a small cleaning bot with an Amazon Auto™ wired into the hardware. “Yeah, Chaos?” came the small robotic voice’s reply.
“Display everyone’s locations in the mansion on the television, and highlight Audio.” He said, turning on the screen.
The robot let out a blip as it processed the request.
“It seems that while Kate is looking in Audio’s room, Alex is looking in the fifth floor library, Mew is currently in an elevator heading to the roof, Solar is searching the second floor’s balcony, Blue is in the backyard’s garden, Willow is right behind you, Baby is making a bread smoothie, and Squish is wandering in the fourth floor game room.”
Chaos took a moment to process all that. “...and Audio?”
“...is nowhere to be found.”
Chaos let out a hmm as he fished out his phone and punched in Audio’s number. Of course, the always-busy man didn’t pick up. Chaos gave the phone a skeptical look, before deciding to leave a voicemail. "Hey, Audio, uhh something is happening and it's important, I guess. Just, come home I guess…"
Auto whirred around, trying to find any clue of where he could be. He checked all of the rooms on the ground floor, but to no avail.
Meanwhile, up on the third floor, Kate was yelling for their tall friend.
“Audio! Audio!” Kate shouted out the window. Her eyes looked over the lush garden that was carefully tended to around the mansion. No sign of their friend anywhere. Seeing Blue along one of the main pathways, she called out to him, “Hey Blue! Have you found him?”
Jumping, Blue’s eyes shot up towards the woman calling out to him from the window. “A-ah- no, I don’t see him down here, sorry.” The tiny Pichu popped out from a small burrow, not being able to find Audio underground.
Whatever that meant.
Suddenly, the lights in Audio’s room started flashing a vibrant red. The loudspeakers started blaring with noise. Startled, Kate fell out the window and onto the unsuspecting Squish, who just happened to be running out of the building at that time.
“I swear, the screams in there are louder than- OOMPH!” Squish started before being interrupted by a certain falling person.
Blue winced and ran over to help them up worryingly, taking a second look at them both to make sure none of them were injured. “We should probably go inside and find out what all this commotion is about.” He suggested with a soft smile, a couple of sprouts making themselves known on his sweater sleeves. Kate nodded silently as she finished dusting herself off. Spork ran ahead of the two, stopping up ahead on the paved road as if telling them to hurry up.
Heading inside, they found that almost everyone had once again gathered in the lounge room, having heard the alarms. Mew and Solar were hyperventilating on the floor. Chaos and Auto had moved to a counter off to the side, and were watching their friends twitch. Chaos would have tried to help, but he still had no idea what was happening.
Shortly following, Willow flew through one of the walls in a purplish blur. No luck on her end either...
“What just happened?” Kate asked. “I never even knew we had an emergency alarm system in here.” Her realization did dawn on quite a couple of the inhabitants of the room.
Who did install an emergency system?
"Nevermind that-!" Mew pointed to the screen, exasperated. It displayed two counts, one for One Big Smash-y Family, and the other for well, the top smash fic. They were tied.
“Oh,” Kate gasped. She pulled out a small pager. “I think it’s finally time to use this thing.”
Chaos looked down at the newcomer, Squish, who was pulling on his sleeve. “Hey, could you tell me what’s going on?” They asked timidly.
“Sure,” Chaos said. “We’ve been trying to get ahead of this other guy for a while now. It looks like today might be our day.”
Just then, Audio teleported in with a bag of groceries. Kate’s page to him had worked. “You called?” He said with a grin. Of course, he’d been away from home this whole time. He looked up and saw the TV, and his grin dropped. Staring at the screen in disbelief, Audio was quiet. The others who had been running around the hotel looking for him seemed to have come back, and were waiting for his reaction. All was quiet.
And then, the number for OBSF began to change…
When a brick was hurled across the room into the TV.
Everyone turned their heads to the source of the destruction.
“BABY!” the whole living room shouted in unison.
Baby just shrugged. “What?” The chaotic gremlin girl never had a valid reason for her actions.
“ Now what are we gonna do?!” Mew shouted. “The number was about to change! How are we supposed to know if we’re finally taking the top spot with the TV broken?” The living room once again erupted into shouting and chaos as everyone wondered what to do.
Just as soon as Solar had calmed down, Solar was panicking again. Chaos, now knowing what was happening, tried his best to calm his friend down.
With the screen completely shattered, Willow couldn't even possess it, making her tendency for tampering with electronics void in this case.
But Kate was already on top of it. She had her phone in her hand, and was rapidly refreshing the page. Finally, she saw it.
The moment they’ve all been waiting for.
“Guys!!” She struggled to shout over the din, her small voice having trouble carrying over the noise. “Guys, look!! We did it!!” She said, bouncing with excitement, but it seemed like no one could hear her.
Audio, who was still standing somewhat dazed in the middle of the room, was the only one who noticed she was trying to say something. “HEY!” His voice boomed over the noise, causing everyone to finally stop and look at him. “Kate has something to say.”
“Oh, we’re sorry, Kate!” Chaos said, turning to her. “What is it?”
She was grinning from ear to ear. “We did it!” She said, wiping a tear from her eye. “We did it!!! OBSF is at the top!!” She displayed her phone to the room, and everyone saw that she was right. The kudos count had ticked up to 970.
OBSF was displayed at the top of the Ao3 page. The awful fic they had been trying to surpass all summer sat below it, now at #2.
After a brief moment of silence while everyone processed the news, the room once again erupted into shouts and cheers.
Willow screeched happily as she flew around the room. Mew and Squish high fived each other. Solar was on the phone, attempting to order a celebratory pizza. Blue and Baby shared a fist bump. Spork chirped happily on Blue’s shoulder. Kate, Chaos, and Alex shared a big group hug. The Auto-Bot buzzed around the room, spinning in circles with excitement. Baby just smiled from their spot on the couch.
Audio stood in the middle of it all, watching his friends celebrate around him. He could hardly believe it. Finally, his own face broke into a grin again, and he joined his friends in celebrating as they all began to swarm him with hugs and high fives and fist bumps of their own.
“We did it guys.” He said.
“We’re better than porn.”