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And Parv's teetering backwards, trying to get a grip, lanky arms flailing every-which-way for something to hold and to survive with-
he doesn't look so self assured now. That shit eating grin is gone, to be replaced with such undiluted fear and panic that it hurts to watch, that the part of the mind that emphasizes is placed on overdrive-
He falls.
Backwards, his mouth a perfect 'o' as he falls into the void, through the tear that's opened up behind him. He doesn't stop fighting, continues to flail even as the chance of coming back diminishes past zero chance.
As his friend falls, all Sparkles can think is that he looks so utterly pathetic.
System;Start
They were fighting mobs out in the wilderness, hoping to get some rare drop for one of Parv's Notchforsaken blood magic experiments. Zombies and skeletons fell in droves to the combined might of the explosion-inducing Polytool and the dark hum of the bound blade, and yet they still kept coming towards their doom.
This whole venture was so far beneath Strife's pay grade that he felt like he was /losing/ resources rather than gaining it. And he was doing this pro bono, which means for free!
Parv was lucky that he liked him so much.
He grunted as he drove the three prongs of the Polytool into a zombie's chest, which promptly caught on fire and exploded, splattering his armour with gunk and gore. His first thought was to try and dust that off, but he realised in time that his quality vest wasn't actually exposed to the elements.
Not like when he first got here, at least.
A skeleton rose up in front of him, its teeth clacking a ghoulish rhythm as it prepared to shoot him point blank in the face. Strife punched the Polytool into the chest and was promptly pushed back by the explosion, but the skeleton was somehow still alive, flailing at him with blackened bones.
He wasn't worried about being hurt, but his weapon was stuck in the skeleton's ribcage. It gnashed right in his face, teeth clattering against the glass of his visor as he tried to pull the Polytool free-
and then he yelped as the skeleton was smashed and a wickedly sharp bound blade buried itself in his abdomen. Oh, it was just his armour and he had been slightly bruised - the health display proclaimed the loss of two hearts - but the main place he was hurt was his ego.
He was sitting on the ground now, driven downwards by the explosion, and now he looked up at Parv in his hideous blood-bound armour that looked like he engaged in cannibalistic fashion. Parv was looking down at him with a quizzical grin, which might have been charming on literally anybody else.
“Parv,” said Strife.
With all the innocence of a kitten in his eyes, Parv casually beheaded a zombie to his left. “Yes, Strifey?”
Strife groaned at the pet name. “Watch where you’re stabbing that thing next time!”
“You looked like you were having fun, so I wanted to join in.” There went another zombie, and Parv did a twirl to take out a third.
Strife scrambled to his feet, readying his weapon. It seemed that they had both taken out a huge chunk of mobs, with only a few stragglers stumbling towards him. With a heavy sigh, Strife said, “This ain’t a game, Parvis.”
And Parv turned around, his expression quite odd for a second or two. “Of course it is.”
“Everything’s a game to you, Parvis.” But there was something wrong here, just as it had been all the other times that Parvis slipped up and said something so utterly strange that Strife had no choice but to ignore it.
It seemed that this time, he couldn’t.
“It’s Minecraft.”
When they went back to look for the door at the base of the crumbling ruins overtaken by time and trashed by a literally hungry audience, they found it broken. It had been smashed apart very deliberately, torn up as if by a great beast furious at the inability of a door to fight back. This was no ravaging of time but pure, unadulterated revenge.
You would think that if a door was broken, that you could just walk through where it stood.
The doorway itself was torn up and it hurt the eye to look at. Pieces of the basement of which they had started their sorry journey with could be visible from minute tears in the air, yet it stung the hand when they tried to touch it. Intermixed with the tears to their world were strange glimpses into other worlds, of trees and machinery and stars and darkness
One of them, although later they weren’t quite sure who, said that they couldn’t go back.
Someone else swore.
They stood there for a long while, longing and wanting and mourning the life that they could never live again. They might have cried, sobbed into each other, scared and unsure, or perhaps they were stoic and only sobbed on the inside, but they knew that they were fucked
They argued amongst each other. Sparkles said that he was glad they came back through the door to look for him, but why did they have to bring Beckii into this mess? Kogie said that Beckii wanted to come when they told her about it and you’re the one who didn’t come back through the door so you can’t talk, at which Sparkles scowled.
Beckii was listening to them and she asked them to not talk about her like she wasn’t there. She didn’t regret coming through and it’s been pretty nice here except for the time Sparkles and Parv tried to kill her.
Leo said that nobody else would even believe them about a weird Minecraft door that just suddenly appeared, and Sparkles said yeah I wouldn’t believe us either, nobody would.
Parv wasn’t paying attention to the conversation.
You said you lost your memories though, right, Beckii said. And Parv got lost and made his jungle home, and Leo and Kogie wandered away to set up the hot springs and I… anyway I think we all got sidetracked and that was a lot of time to not come back here, possibly months.
We’re stuck.
We can’t be stuck, Parv burst out. We can’t be. I refuse to accept it. And Leo said hey we have a hot springs here, we could do anything here we can build so much, but Kogie turned to him and was like are you insane dude we have to get home.
And Sparkles said no, we have to stay here.
Beckii tried to say something but they were shouting, getting angrier, voices raised and she could see their eyes glinting green and she was standing up now in horror going what are you all doing.
And they could see each other’s eyes and something black spiralling from it and they stopped.
They just stopped.
Everything went back to normal.
That night, as they all slept in makeshift beds in a melon house, Sparkles sneaked out to a quiet jungle pool, and by the light of the moon he stared at his reflection and at his absolutely normal right eye, and he remembered-
The two of them had flown and leapt home, and Strife was beating himself up for even thinking of that castle as home. They hadn’t spoken as they made their various ways there, which could have been attributed to the different speeds and altitudes they were at.
Now, they were standing next to the computer terminal, unloading their gains and not talking.
Time to break the silence, then.
Slowly and deliberately, Strife said, “Minecraft isn’t a word, Parvis. It’s Minecraftia.”
“It’s a game. By Mojang.” Parv spoke equally as slowly, as if he was explaining something that he knew Strife wouldn’t understand. “We’re in Minecraft, which is a computer game, which isn’t real life.”
Strife frowned. He remembered Parv saying equally weird things back when they had first met, and of course he didn't pay a lot of attention to whatever the hell Parv went on about.
“You’re not gonna believe me, not ever, so I didn’t really say anything. Lew- Xephos didn’t believe me, and he got sick of having to look after me so he sent me to you.” Parv seemed to be quite serious now. “I know when I’m a burden. I know when saying weird stuff is funny and when it makes it worse.”
“Parv…” Strife was lost for words
But Parv carried on. “And this will make it worse, Strife, but finally you’re asking. See, I didn’t know you in my world, so it’s not as bad. Although you must have joined the Yogscast after I left, or maybe you’re a friend, so maybe I do know you in the real world.”
This was becoming pure nonsense now, but Parv seemed quite upset and Strife wasn’t keen on pulling his heart out again. He stayed where he was, watching Parv stare at the ground.
“But I wouldn’t- you wouldn’t understand. You can’t.”
“Try me.”
Parv looked up. “What? No, you can’t, Will.” He wasn’t crying, nor was his voice strangled, but it was rather disconcerting to see him this shaken.
“Try me, I said. I understand a hell of a lot more than you about things in general.” Strife forced a smile onto his face- his opaque visor was with the rest of his armour, in a specially marked chest- and he stepped forward-
There was something around Parv’s right eye that wasn’t there before. It spread out over his skin, tiny circuitlike lines snaking forth and forming a diamond shape, and his lovely brown eyes were a sudden shade of unnatural, emerald green.
Parv said in a dreamy fashion, “Fine. You know what? Fine.” He reached forward and grabbed Strife’s shoulders.
Strife fell backwards-
Eʀʀᴏʀ 527: Jᴀᴠᴀ ʜᴀs ᴅᴇᴛᴇᴄᴛᴇᴅ ᴀ ᴍᴇᴍᴏʀʏ ᴀᴄᴄᴇss ᴠɪᴏʟᴀᴛɪᴏɴ: Uɴɪᴠᴇʀsᴇ ᴏᴜᴛ ᴏғ ʙᴏᴜɴᴅs
Eʀʀᴏʀ
Eʀʀᴏʀ
Eʀʀᴏʀ: Uɴᴀᴜᴛʜᴏʀɪsᴇᴅ ᴀᴄᴄᴇss ʙʏ ᴜsᴇʀ: Ｗｉｌｌｉａｍ Ｓｔｒｉｆｅ
Eʀʀᴏʀ
Uɴᴀᴜᴛʜᴏʀɪsᴇᴅ ᴏᴘᴇʀᴀᴛɪᴏɴ
And he fell forward, coughing and shaking and breathing hard as if his whole body had been squeezed through something absolutely tiny and then stabbed over all. His head, his mind was burning and shit, he could see the shine of his eye glow on the floor, he was that fucked up and stressed.
He attempted to look up at Parv, who was staring back with a serene smile. His eyes were still that weird shade of green and the symbol was still there.
What had he-
He had been in a strangely normal room, sitting at a computer, playing some sort of video game and speaking into a microphone, and he hadn’t been himself. He had been someone else, someone who was not Strife at fucking all, and it had been fucking terrifying.
“So you and Parv have a series together,” said Parv. “Solutions in Chaos, and then Blood and Chaos”
“Why’re you talking about yourself in the third person?” Strife coughed out.
“I’m Parvis, yup. But I’m also the muse and I’m also the saviour, and I’m hiding from him because we are the same.” Parv let out a laugh and then he stumbled to the ground.
Strife staggered forwards and grabbed Parv. He turned Parv’s head to look at him, and saw that his eyes were fading into his usual, deep brown. The symbol was gone, and now Parv was blinking up at him in abject confusion.
“What the hell happened?” It was probably not the time to yell, but Strife didn’t care.
Parv shrugged, a lame action in the arms of Strife. “Uh, I dunno. She came out to play.” He sprung to his feet and stretched, and turned to face Strife, a slight smile on his face. “So, if I had stayed, I end up making a Minecraft series with you! I’d probably make a Minecraft series with anybody who asked, so don’t feel that special.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Parv frowned. “Why not? It’s- you saw it, right?”
With a shudder, Strife turned away. He didn’t want to think about that guy in the room, playing games and having fun.
He did not want to think of himself who was not himself.
And.
He really did not want to think of a Parv who knew what those powers were and how to control them.
They met a long time ago, through an open door.
He had to teach her guitar while sitting next to the door because she wasn’t allowed to come out. He guided her fingers and he brought his music sheets down to the basement and they learned together.
She didn’t really have a name, Echo wasn’t really a name, it was a thing so he named her Cassandra and said she was very pretty with her pink hair, and she blushed. She asked him what his name was and he hesitated and said Sparkles, but she didn’t catch the hypocrisy.
She was good with computers. She said she came from the stars and she was asleep for a really long time. She took him into her world a few times and it was a wonderful place with blocks and magic and creepers and the sun setting on a great building that would have been wonderful to play a gig in.
He never introduced her to the first band and then the second band had been Area 11, but he never introduced her to them either, saying she was a story he was writing, a story he was making up for ages and ages and ages and they were cool with that, but a weird file with strange lyrics appeared on their computers one day and they all looked at Sparkles.
They recorded it.
Later Sparkles went to Cassandra and said what the fuck was that about and Cassandra said she wanted to join the band, she wanted to be free from this place, she wanted to take a walk in the streets and she wanted to be free from this.
She was jealous of him.
Can I make a deal with you? said she. I think we can change places. You can come into my world and I’ll come into yours. I can be the singer and you can explore my world as much as you like.
But I’ll be lonely, Sparkles said.
Here’s something you can do.
And during a jam session, Sparkles pretended that he was surprised when a Minecraft door appeared.
They didn’t talk to each other for a good few hours.
Normally, when this happened, it would be Parv who would be the first to crumble. He would moan about he hated the quiet or maybe he’d start humming or tapping out a beat, and Strife would sigh because it was usually Parv starting the silence thing for a good few hours. However, this time, it was Strife.
“I’m sorry,” he said as they sat on two beds in the cultist room, ready to sleep.
Parv had been tucking himself in, but then he stopped and turned to look at Strife. “Whatever for?” He looked genuinely quizzical.
“For freaking the hell out! It’s- it’s obviously very important to you, so if you’re gonna have to talk about it, I’ll listen.” He sighed.
Parv said nothing, but was grinning from ear to ear.
“Tell me how you got here,” said Strife.
He watched as Parv’s eyes lit up, although not as literally as his own, and Parv almost bounced upwards into a sitting position. He moved the blanket covers up to his body and curled up in it, clearly preparing himself for Storytime with Parvytime.
And then he proceeded to say the most ridiculous things.
Strife tried his hardest to keep an open mind but it was hard. Doors didn’t just appear out of nowhere, and zombies attending a gig? A planned creeper attack on a concert? You have got to be fucking kidding me.
The world that Parv was in was called Gigacraft. Strife snorted at this.
“So we tried to survive, I guess. We had a spa, and we had each other, and sometimes things would get really weird between us because we were homesick. We were also getting tired too, of each other.” Parv paused to take a breath and then quickly carried on. “We were playing Monopoly, or what we could remember of it. Kogie threw a shitfit and almost killed us all.”
These names were just nonsense to Strife, but he could certainly imagine it based on what Parv had told him. Which he presumed was a slight misrepresentation of the characters.
Parv continued. “And then me and Sparkles had an argument over- something stupid, really. We were yelling at each other, and Leo and Beckii were trying to keep us apart. I think I wanted to go home, but Sparkles was acting weird. He told me to fuck off if I really wanted to, and his eyes were that weird green with our symbol around it, and I- I fell. Backwards.” He fell silent at this, staring at Strife’s face, waiting for a reaction.
He wasn’t sure how to react.
“I fell for a really long time. I started counting after a while but I lost track. It stops being scary, you know, falling in the void. Actually gets kinda fun!” At this, Parv smiled.
“And then you landed here,” said Strife.
“And then I landed here,” Parv repeated. “Or, well, in Chaosville. I managed to bump into Xephos there, funnily enough, but I kept calling him Lewis and I didn’t know what I was doing and where I was. He got really annoyed with me, and him and Honeydew thought I was really stupid which- which I’m not! I just don’t know the place that well. So they sent me to you. Even though you think I’m an idiot, you’re still a lot nicer than they were.”
Strife almost blushed bright green at this. Instead, he decided to interrogate Parv. “So, uh, what the hell is with that symbol thing and the eyes? You said it happened to Sparkles?” It was also creepy as shit, but he didn’t add that.
Parv shrugged. “All of us, actually. It only started happening after that first argument, when- I don’t know why, we did kinda argue a lot, but at that moment we were just so fucking pissed at each other and it was like something dark came into us like some sort of possession. And it hasn’t left.”
But something wasn’t right about that. “You said ‘she’ earlier.”
“Did I?” Parv didn’t look too bothered about this. In a suddenly sleepy tone, he said, “She must be pretty nice,” yawned and then promptly went to sleep after a quick, murmured “Parvnight!”
Strife lay awake in the darkness for a long while after, thinking of green eyes and dark diamonds and how such an idiot could possibly not realise the vast potentials of his powers.
Oh well. It was for the better.
She’s so excited.
Finally, she can get into the world that she’d heard so much from, the world from which she sees glimpses of, the world outside her own small borders, and finally she can see them play, and all on the same day.
She watches them step into her world, lost and confused and in the dark, and she follows them to the stage where they play their songs to the crowd she’s gathered just for them. The crowd appreciates their flesh more than their tunes, she thinks, but they certainly are excited.
But she forgets about the creepers, and they come tumbling down onto her perfect day. They blow up everything and the band runs for their lives, and they
they leave Sparkles behind.
He’ll be lonely! she wants to cry out. Stop! But they tumble through, and the rubble falls on Sparkles. She tries to push herself through the doorway, to tear herself away from the world she’s inextricably linked to, this world that will not let her go, but it bends and it almost breaks, and she can feel bits of herself peeing off so she stops and she hides.
They come back for him, with a girl. She waits for them to leave, and then she tries again with all her power
and
Eʀʀᴏʀ: Aᴅᴍɪɴ Eᴄʜᴏ ɪs ɴᴏᴛ ᴀᴜᴛʜᴏʀɪsᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ ᴘᴇʀғᴏʀᴍ ᴛʜɪs ᴏᴘᴇʀᴀᴛɪᴏɴ
she
Rᴇᴍᴏᴠɪɴɢ Aᴅᴍɪɴ ᴘʀɪᴠɪʟᴇɢᴇs ғʀᴏᴍ Aᴅᴍɪɴ Eᴄʜᴏ
breaks
into so many little EʀʀᴏʀEʀʀᴏʀEʀʀᴏʀ p i e c e s
and her mind is fractured and she’s screaming at sparkles she thought it could work she thought that the law of equivalent exchange she thought
Eʀʀᴏʀ
she was wrong
I turn you into my enemy
Eʀʀᴏʀ
'uʍop ǝɯ llnd ʇɐɥʇ suıɐɥɔ ǝɥʇ pu∀
˙punoɹƃ ǝɥʇ oʇ ƃuıllɐɟ ǝɹ∀
'ʎʞs ǝɥʇ uı sʇɥƃıl ǝɥʇ ll∀
she’s absorbed by the four of them
Eʀʀᴏʀ: Usᴇʀs Ｓｐａｒｋｌｅ5*, ａｃｐａｒｖｉｓ, Ｋｏｇｉｅ ᴀɴᴅ ＬｅｏＧＴ92 ʜᴀᴠᴇ ʙᴇᴇɴ ɢɪᴠᴇɴ ᴀᴅᴍɪɴɪɴᴀᴛɪᴏɴ ᴘʀɪᴠɪʟᴇɢᴇs
Uɴᴀᴜᴛʜᴏʀɪsᴇᴅ ᴏᴘᴇʀᴀᴛɪᴏɴ
Cause everything's gone; it's been wiped out
The fire's spread to the basement now
Through every part of me
because the four of them were there before maybe
e v e r y p a r t o f m e
I deferred my happiness,
For loneliness and time.
they came back, days and months and years later to the door she broke when she tried to leave
This was the moment, this was the place
This was the night that everything changed
I’m hiding from you
Hiding from you
Hiding from you
Cause we are the same
Betrayed by trust, forever left to scream.
Leo, Kogie and Beckii are looking at him with horrified expressions etched onto their faces. They back away as he turns to look at them, and his heart drops.
His heart fucking drops as he realises what he’s done.
Nobody says anything at all, until Kogie breaks the silence with a stuttered “y-your eye”. He turns away as Sparkles glares at him, unwilling to meet his gaze.
Sparkles walks, slowly, calmly, to the water in the spa. He doesn’t even bother changing, doesn’t even bother with the niceties and the necessities anymore. He kneels down and he looks at his face in the reflection.
It’s still there. His eyes are still their usual light blue, but that fucking symbol remains.
And he feels like it's a mark of guilt.