Work Text:
“Hey boys, you want to play a prank on Jimmy?” Joel asked.
“You don’t even have to ask. What is it?” fWhip perked.
Joel took the potion out of his inventory with a flourish. “Behold! A shrinking potion!”
“Shrinki—Oh you aren’t.” Scott grinned.
“I am!” Joel grinned back. “Except I’m going to tell Jimmy it’s a revealing potion and pretend he’s been a toy in disguise.”
Scott snickered. “That’s hilarious. What do you need us for?”
“I just think it would be funny if you came out of the woodwork to coo over him being so tiny, that’s all.” Joel shrugged. “He’s going to be like, two feet high.”
“Oh my gosh! That’s so small!” Scott gushed. “He’s going to be adorable!”
“That’s smaller than me!” fWhip cackled. “I’m in!”
“Same. Right now?” Scott asked.
“Yeah sure. I don’t think he’s busy.” Joel tucked the potion away again.
--
Joel swooped toward Tumble Town. He could see Jimmy in the center of the bowl, talking to himself again. He didn’t notice Joel until the god landed, kicking up sand.
“Hello Jimmy!” Joel greeted. Jimmy waved the dust out of his face and squinted at Joel suspiciously. Joel kept his hands behind his back and an innocent smile on his face. Jimmy, of course, picked up on it immediately.
“What are you doing?” Jimmy demanded.
“Wow, not even a hello? How rude.” Joel said.
Jimmy rolled his eyes. “Hello. What are you hiding behind your back?”
“Hm?” Joel tilted his head in faux confusion. “Oh, you mean this?”
Joel took the potion out. It gleamed almost too bright in the mesa sun. Jimmy shaded his eyes, which squinted with even more suspicion.
“What’s that?”
“I’m so glad you asked!” Joel said dramatically. “This is a revealing potion! It reveals hidden Lore. And it’s for you!”
Jimmy’s eyes widened. “Joel, wai—!”
Too late, Joel had already thrown it. To his annoyance, he felt Lore take his words seriously and twist the potion to match. He couldn’t very well snatch it back, it was already in the air and arcing nicely toward Jimmy. Joel resigned himself to the crowing Jimmy would surely do when nothing happened and redoing the complicated potion to successfully prank him later, not to mention how disappointed Scott and fWhip would be.
After all, what Lore about himself could Jimmy be hiding?
Jimmy tried to dodge. He wasn’t fast enough. The bottle smashed against his shoulder, covering him in vibrant blue liquid. Joel braced for a lot screaming from Jimmy, first from surprise and then from triumph.
Jimmy’s scream cut off. His face was twisted like he was still screaming at the top of his lungs, but not a single sound came out. To Joel’s horror, Jimmy warped. Wings—dozens, hundreds, thousands—burst from his back, flapping in disjointed panic, expanding out like a balloon. Mouths opened and closed behind yellow feathers stained with black dust. fWhip and Scott landed nearby, shouting, as wings lifted Jimmy in the air, cradling his body like a demented blanket, bands of violet and gold wrapping him up—
And
reality
broke.
--
Static.
Glitches.
White noise.
Voices.
oh wow did you see that INSANE you look sick dude WHAT JUST HAPPENED are those mouths YEAH those are mouths sorry I’ve never seen his true form before JOEL AND FWHIP AND SCOTT are they okay is the server okay holy cow I think everything’s broken JIMMY BROKE THE SERVER NO JOEL BROKE THE SERVER since when can JOEL of all people rip the fabric of reality he’s a god duh jimmy i think the servers broken call Grian CALL GRIAN CALL GRIAN CALL GRIAN HERMES T-T BABYS FIRST SERVER CRASH HAHA YES LET IT BURN thatll teach them for calling our sheriff a toy JIMMY VILLAIN ARC >.>
Red blue green red blue green red blue green red blue—yellow. Yellow purple yellowpurpleyellow—green redbluegreen redbluegreen—
would grian really help tho reality is BREAKING YES HE FUCKING WOULD [Girlyd0gg0lov3r was Banned] uh Jimmy’s more powerful than gods lmao ooo do we get to see Jimmy do eldritch stuff finally ELDRITCH JIMMY ELDRITCH JIMMY ELDRITCH JIMMY guys stop he’s clearly upset ELDRITCH JIMMY ELDRITCH JIMMY im scared will they have to scrap the server I hope not everyone in it will be scrapped too NOOOOO JIMMY BETTER FIX IT MY POOR MEOW MEOW FALSE DON’T WORRY JIMMY I BELIEVE IN YOU
Open yawning void. Frames of stained teeth closing around—
so how does one fix this cut everything out i think cut everything out like paper and scissors no like editing video i think its been awhile hey jimmy while youre messing with reality are you going to change anything else make yourself a toy NO NO MAKE JOEL MORTAL DIAMONDS YOU NEED 2 B THE RICHEST
“Guys! Quiet down, I need to fix this!”
Static.
Glitches.
Empty.
Full.
Everything.
Nothing.
—bluegreen redbluegreen—yellowpurpleyellowyellowpurple—redbluegreenredbluegreenredbluegreen—
Scattered over everything-nothing-void-infinite-present. Who is it? What is he?
Fractures.
Fractals.
Feathers.
Forever.
“Done!”
Strings.
Strings grabbing him-it-what-who-name and pulling until everything crashed together—ow ow ow ow pressure tight too small—and pieces slotted
back
in
place
and
reality
was
f—
--
Joel groaned. His head hurt. A lot of things hurt, actually, but his head was the most prominent one.
“Joel? You okay?”
Joel groaned again and tried to open his eyes. The world was so bright. He shut them immediately.
“Joel?”
Joel took a deep breath to brace himself—and accidentally inhaled sand, which did wonders for waking him up. He scrambled to sit as he coughed and took a real bracing breath before finally opening his eyes. Jimmy stood in front of him, hand raised as though to help, the most concerned expression on his face Joel had ever seen.
“Wha’ happened?” Joel rasped. Ugh, his mouth felt like sand. He needed water.
Jimmy hesitated. “What do you remember?”
“Um.” Joel looked around. He was in the mesa, in the center of the bowl. Scott and fWhip were slowly coming to next to him. “Coming to… prank you? I took out the potion and then… nothing. Jimmy, what happened, seriously?”
Jimmy shook his head, a faint smile on his face. “You tripped and splashed that stupid potion all over yourself is what happened!”
“What?” Joel looked down at himself. He was still the same size that he always was. “No, that can’t be right.”
Jimmy crossed his arms and scowled. “It is! And it completely crashed the server!”
Joel gaped at Jimmy. “It cras—no. No, that can’t be right. It was just a little shrinking potion! A harmless joke!”
“You get the color of that llama?” Scott mumbled. “Ugh. Wha…”
“Clearly it wasn’t!” Jimmy threw his hands in the air. “Because, and I cannot stress this enough, you crashed the server!”
“The server crashed? Wha’?” fWhip was taking out his comm before his eyes even opened. Joel watched him squint blearily at the screen for a few seconds before his eyes bugged out of his skull. “What the HELL?”
Joel’s stomach dropped. He checked his comm. He didn’t have any admin abilities, but he could see the notification of a server crash—a full hour ago. It was quickly buried under people panicking, none of them from before a timestamp of less than a minute.
Joel had been in server crashes before, but never one like this, where everything shut down so completely no one was evacuated or had any memory of it.
That was… that was bad. That was really, really bad.
fWhip turned to Joel. “Dude! The fuck did you put in that potion?”
Jimmy squawked something about PG.
“It was just a shrinking potion! I swear!” Joel cried.
“Did you test it?” Scott slowly stood up and stretched, cataloguing his body. He was covered in tiny scrapes from sand, like Joel, and held his head like it ached, also like Joel, but otherwise seemed fine, unlike Joel. There was something twisting his stomach in knots.
“I—no, but I followed the directions perfectly! It should have worked!” Joel insisted.
“Next time, test your potions. Or better yet, get them from Shelby.” fWhip typed furiously in his comm, admin controls open. “You’re so lucky you’re a god, I can’t imagine what else that would have done if you hit Jimmy! He’s just a human!”
Jimmy swallowed, face pale. “Ye-ah. I can’t-I can’t imagine either.”
Joel’s mouth went dry. The guilt got twistier. “Jimmy, I am so, so sorry.”
Jimmy gave him a blank smile. “I forgive you.”
Joel didn’t feel any better. If anything, he felt worse. fWhip cursed again, drawing Jimmy’s annoyance.
“I need to plug in, but I don’t think anything from the past hour is recoverable. It’s like something went through and cut everything out! There’s literally nothing there!”
The three others winced.
“Good luck. I’m getting out of here before something else crashes.” Scott shot into the sky. fWhip followed a moment later, muttering to himself and trying to code and fly at the same time. Somehow, he didn’t crash.
“Joel.”
Joel slowly returned his attention to Jimmy. He was more serious than Joel had ever seen him. Joel tried to swallow.
“Yes?”
“I’m okay with the toy jokes, but if you do something like that ever, I mean ever, again, I will not be okay real quick.” Jimmy warned.
Joel shrank back and nodded. “I won’t do that again. Promise. I’m sorry, Jimmy.”
Jimmy stared at Joel for a long minute. Joel squirmed, feeling like Jimmy was staring right into his code. Jimmy finally nodded.
“Okay. Bye Joel.”
Joel took the clear dismissal for what it was and hurriedly flew away. Right before he was out of earshot, he heard Jimmy talking to himself again.
“That was a close one. Guys, seriously, shut up, that was not co—”
Joel shuddered. For some reason, Jimmy’s little quirk was scaring him now. He couldn’t get away from the mesa fast enough.