Chapter Text
Your name is John Egbert and you never thought a glowing blue spirograph would be so comforting. Honestly, despite what you learned about “premature ascension” or whatever Rose called it, you just want to step through it and end this nightmare one way or another. In fact, there are only two things stopping you from doing exactly that. One of them is complete, undeniable fear of what you would find on the other side. The other one is a certain Knight who is taking his own sweet time. With an annoyed sigh, you activate your Serious Business Goggles.
EB: hello?
EB: dave?
EB: are you there?
TG: ready
That one word tells you a million things. Just that one word says more than he ever would tell you out loud. John, I’m afraid. Why can’t we go through one gate? I wish we could all go through this together. Thank you for not leaving me alone in this, I don’t want to go alone. We have to do this. What you long to and know that you can’t do is to return with everything that you really want to say to him. I’m sorry, so sorry that we can’t all just step through the same gate together. When you get back online, I’ll be waiting for you. No matter what happens, you aren’t alone. There’s just a screen between us again. It’ll be like the good old days. Instead you hide that, as much as it hurts to. Part of you wonders if that’s how Dave feels all the time.
EB: same.
EB: let’s go.
It took only one word for you and Dave to speak your minds, but all hell breaking loose requires just one word more. If everything goes according to Dave’s plan, and you have to assume that it will, you both step through your gates at the same time, eyes closed tightly against whatever you’re about to find. Light dances across your eyelids, imprinting the spirograph image into your mind as the light swirls around you. Experience has proven that it isn’t a good idea to open your eyes while traveling through a gate, so for a quick instant you feel lost and alone in the miracle lights. It doesn’t take long to start feeling the change. The world around you shifts, flutters, and fades. Dark, firefly-filled clouds disappear to reveal the clearest blue sky that Washington has ever known. The rocky landscape softens into grass and smooths into roads. Houses spring up; filling with everything a family holds dear and just a little bit more. The mushrooms’ glow is the last to disappear, illuminating your eyelids once more with a sudden flash. You can see none of this happening; instead you feel it all happen around you.
After another sudden pause in the movement of the world, wind sweeps across your face. It catches you off guard, but in a pleasant way. For once it isn’t created by wings or powers. At last there is just a natural wind from one of the non-existent corners of the Earth. A smile spreads across your face and, though it seemed a stupid thing to do, you laugh blindly into the wind. That’s when the chanting begins.
Your eyes fly open and your breath is caught in your throat. Below you, the paved streets that you have grown up in shift like a sea. It takes you a nauseous second to realize that they are actually filled with hundreds of people who are crying out and all simply moving. After a moment, you can focus enough to make out a bit of what they are saying. Their chants cheer on a creator, a god and you glanc around frantically, trying to figure out what religious rite you are interfering with, but you find only more shifting streets far below. It is probably right about then that you finally put the pieces together. You are still God Tier, floating above your roof and looking down on the world that you have somehow managed to help recreate. Except the occupants, the same ones that had inhabited your world before Sburb, aren’t as oblivious as you imagined that they would be. Your Serious Business Goggles flash the Pesterchum logo, bringing a torrent of new messages to your attention.
GG: john are you okay?
You send a quick response to Jade, just to confirm that you are out, safe, and will talk with her later. After her you check the messages from Rose.
TT: John, there is something akin to a worship camp in my front lawn.
There wasn’t much to say to that, so you don’t reply beyond a quick confirmation that you have made it and are in a very similar situation. Last but not least is Dave. Before opening that window, you carefully eye the various trolltags on your chumroll. They all remain offline.
TG: help
You sort of have to reply to that.
EB: what is it?
TG: theres hundreds of them
TG: theyre everywhere and theyre worshiping me
TG: what do i do
EB: there here and at rose’s house too.
EB: i have no idea what’s going on.
TG: fuck
EB: calm down, okay?
TG: i dont need this right after the game
TG: what the fuck do they even want?
EB: dave?
TG: yeah
EB: i think that they know who we are.
TG: well shit
TG: we have a grand prize winner here
TG: get him the fucking huge pink elephant
EB: dave there’s no reason to be mean.
TG: fuck
TG: i have to go
turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering ectoBiologist [EB]