Chapter Text
Chat 1 - Orphan Arrows, Orrows if you will
(On Hypixel, crafting arrows)
As far as Techno could remember, the voices had always been there. He didn't know why they were with him, nor did he really understand what they were in the first place. But they were there and that was all that mattered in the end.
They had been there when he took his first shaky steps, cheering him on and then laughing when he stumbled. They had been there when he had first learned to read, yelling letters and corrections at him as he struggled through the pages of "Frankenstein".
They had been there before Phil, before Skeppy, even before Simon. They had just… always been there. Their presence was comforting, in a way, even if they did give him a headache on a regular basis.
Currently they were doing their collective best to distract him from his work. Kinda inconvenient, if not exactly surprising, considering how easily they tended to get bored.
Techno had been sitting in his garden for the past hour or so, enjoying the late afternoon sun as he crafted new arrows. The ones they sold in town were never quite good enough. It was an easy task, but pretty monotonous, much to the voices' increasing and very vocal disapproval.
"I don't know what you're complaining about, Chat. This is peak content right here", Techno claimed.
Predictably, this did not convince them. The voices just ignored him, instead continuing their rambling demands for better entertainment.
"We should play hangman again, that was fun" one of the voices cut through the chorus, temporarily louder and clearer than the rest. This happened regularly.
"Bruh… You guys suck at hangman. Anyway, I can't draw while I make these.", Techno answered them.
He rolled his eyes as Chat complained about slander. As if they hadn't spent an hour alternating between guessing E, Blood and Spaceship yesterday.
"Those arrows are lame, nothing even died for them. Just give in and make the orphan arrows already. Create the Orrows, Techno, it would be so sick", another voice called out through the chorus.
"We've been over this you fools," Techno told them, "Orphans make awful building material. You can't even farm them."
They had had this particular argument about five times now. Still, the voices remained divided on the issue. This time they were arguing if orphanages qualified as orphan farms.
For a few minutes he worked in relative peace, listening to the voices argue amongst themselves. He had always liked doing that. It felt like hanging out with friends. Friends who didn't expect him to talk out loud or actually be around people.
It was nice. Not that he'd ever admit that. Chat would never let him live that down and anyway, he had a reputation to uphold.
Unfortunately for him, the peace didn't last long. It never did, Chat had a terrible attention span.
"Hey Techno, if we can't have Orrows we should make blood arrows instead. Weaponize the blood of your enemies, Techno!" a voice called out to him.
"Blood is a liquid, you fools. I can't stab people with liquid, they'd laugh at me," Techno told them.
Chat, of course, collectively disagreed with this perfectly sound statement.
"You could freeze the blood first. Then you could fire blood-sickles at people. Like a Waterbender, but edgier," one of them suggested.
Techno considered this for a moment as Chat rambled on about him being a blood bender. It would probably work, although keeping them cool would be kind of annoying. His thoughts were interrupted by another voice cutting through the chorus.
"I'm pretty sure blood-sickles are banned by the Geneva Convention, L," they said.
"I mean, did Hypixel ever sign the Geneva Convention?" another voice cut in before Techno had a chance to answer.
Honestly, it was a fair question. Techno shrugged. "Uh, it's not part of the server rules, I guess," he offered after a moment's consideration.
Chat apparently found this fact exceptionally funny.
"Simon Hypixel Pro-War Crimes Real Not Clickbait", one of them shouted through the amused ramblings.
This assertion was met with general approval. Techno rolled his eyes. He listened, amused, to Chats nonsense for a moment as he threw another arrow on the growing pile in front of him. Another nice thing about having Chat, Techno found, was that he never really got too bored, even when doing something as monotonous as this.
Expectedly, Chat's attention soon shifted again, apparently returning to the question of blood bending. Techno smiled to himself as they quickly moved on to argue about bending in general and what element was best.
"Yo Techno, what element would you bend, though?", one of them asked him.
"Water, obviously. It's clearly the superior choice. Plus, the blood bending fits the brand," Techno answered without hesitation.
This statement was met with expectedly mixed reactions.
"Earth would clearly be more on brand, cause farming. Also, you could bone-bend. That would be sick," one of them insisted.
"I think it should be air, because you're the only one here who can fly without wings, lol. Also, lung bending pog," claimed another.
This led to more light hearted arguments about the potential uses of different bending types. Techno listened to this with great enjoyment, occasionally offering a short remark of his own. It was fun to banter with Chat. They were easy targets and their reactions were often fascinatingly weird.
Somehow, their conversation ended up shifting to the defensive uses of calligraphy brushes, of all things. It wasn't the strangest subject their conversations had led to, Techno supposed.
"Bruh, those things are way too weak to stop a sword. You'd just get a splinter with your stab wound, you fools," he insisted, waving the arrow he was working on for emphasis.
"You could poke someone's eye out with it, that'd distract them. Or splash the paint into their eyes. It's clearly a great defensive weapon, Techno," one of the voices disagreed.
Techno was about to retort when another voice called out, apparently having had an epiphany.
"Ooooh! Hey, maybe we could paint the arrows? At least then they'd be a bit less boring,", they suggested.
Techno considered this. It wasn't that bad of an idea, really. Might be funny to see some nerds fall to an arrow covered in jokes or his face. Chat seemed to like the idea too, shouting a litany of suggestions. From what Techno could make out, Rainbows and Blood were in the lead. He couldn't say he was surprised.
"Alright, alright, fine. We'll finish this stack and then we'll paint them." Techno conceded.
He wasn't sure he even had paint around, but he supposed they could always take a quick trip into town. It wasn't like he had anything else planned this evening.