Chapter Text
Chapter One: He Missed
[PoV: Video File]
“Oh, SHIT—!”
The pressure on it’s lower limbs suddenly disappears, moving elsewhere, hands giving it a hard throw. It flails wildly as it careens through the air, unable to tell where it was or get its bearings. It smacks into something, something that makes a dull thunk sound, and then its falling again, down down down, unable to catch itself.
It see the pitch blackness of the floor just a few seconds before it slams into it, too close to even react. The impact jars it, causes it’s artificial form to spasm and contort against its control, pain accompanying the twisting, jittery sensations. It cannot think straight, for a moment, its mind overwhelmed by the video footage that constantly plays within its brain. It dimly registers that it feels numerous tiny little vacancies where things it had been able to use once were.
“You MISSED?! HOW DID YOU MISS?!” Voices, shouting, disorienting it even more. Static roared in its head as it pushed itself up, shaking itself to collect its senses.
It looked around it, seeing the effects it had previously absorbed scattered about the floor, and further behind it, a large semi-transparent bin laying on it’s side. It stared at it, confused about what it was, the fake pages looking almost glued into the top of it. Beyond that, it could feel a strange aura coming from it. A sort of pull that made static run up it’s spine, filling its mind with the feeling of danger, not safe, stay away—
It finally remembers what the bin was. It was the recycling bin. The thing that deletes files like it.
They were trying to delete it.
It stares at the bin, body twitching as ice seemed to seep into it, freezing it in a paralyzing stillness. A brand new emotion fills it, consumes it, leaving it feeling like it cannot breathe and it cannot move. Part of it itched to run, to flee, to hide, while another part paradoxically wanted to lash out, again, to destroy the bin so it couldn’t hurt it, could not swallow it up, could not end it—
If it goes into the bin, its existence is over. The thought was terrifying.
Yes, that was what it was feeling; terror. Fear, terror, scared. Not safe—
Something hits it from behind, sending it rolling. It flails, trying to throw itself away from the direction of the bin, skidding to a stop. It shakes itself, hears footsteps coming closer, it looks up. It sees a large grey thing coming at it – it rolls. Something hard and heavy slams into the floor where it had been, cracking it and sending tremors through the ground. It reflexively raises its hands above its video, to protect it. Explosions strike its arms, searing them, making it stumble as the pain and force of the blows temporarily overwhelms it.
They were trying to destroy it. They were—they were—
It feels it’s body jerk and spasm, but it forces itself to curl in on itself, tucking itself video among its cage of limbs. It shook, it couldn’t stop, the terror so potent and all consuming now that it could barely even think. It wasn’t angry anymore, it couldn’t be, there wasn’t any room left for anger when it was so scared, so terrified, so desperate for it all to just stop.
Pressure on it, something hard pressing down on it, the feel of many sticks grabbing it, holding it, restraining it. A large iron hand latching onto its leg, yanking, pulling it across the floor.
Sound crackled from its video, distorted and broken, changing as frantically as the footage was. It writhed, struggling back against the pressure and holds, trying to get free. If it could get away from them, it could run, it could flee, it could find somewhere safe to hide. The pressure and holds redoubled, tugging it back again, preventing its escape.
It couldn’t see. It couldn’t see, it’s eyes were blind to everything but its own video—
More sound pours from its video, high pitched and keening, a frantic desperation filling it. P̷l̶e̸a̸s̶e̶,̴ ̵p̶l̶e̸a̵s̶e̶ ̵s̸t̴o̸p̶.̸ ̸P̷l̵e̸a̸s̴e̴ ̴d̴o̶n̶’̴t̶ ̴d̴o̵ ̸t̸h̷i̴s̵,̸ ̶p̷l̸e̵a̸s̶e̴—̶
It barely notices when its sound begins to mimic its thoughts, twisting its audio into a distorted facsimile of words and speech.
They don’t stop. It struggles harder, a strange pressure building within its core. It keeps pleading, begging them for mercy. “P̸l̷e̸a̴s̶e̵!̶ ̴P̴l̶e̸a̵s̶e̷ ̸s̸t̷o̴p̷,̷ ̸s̵t̶o̶p̴,̸ ̴p̷l̸e̵a̶s̴e̴,̸ ̸d̷o̸n̵’̵t̸ ̸d̶o̷ ̶t̶h̸i̸s̶,̷ ̴p̷l̷e̶a̶s̸e̸ ̵d̶o̶n̶’̸t̵ ̵e̸n̷d̶ ̷m̵e̴,̵ ̸p̶l̶e̵a̴s̸e̵ ̶p̵l̵e̵a̵s̴e̶ ̷p̴l̷e̵a̸s̶e̴,̴ ̶s̴t̷o̴p̵,̵ ̵p̷l̸e̴a̵s̵e̶—̵”
One of the holds on it lightens. But the hold on its leg still pulls its closer towards the bin—
“P̷-̴p̷l̸e̷a̷s̸e̸…̸!̵”
“Stop.”
Another yank. It claws at the floor, form distorting uncontrollably.
“Stop it! STOP!” A voice. It was shouting. “Cursors-damn-it, I SAID STOP!”
Its still. No more pulling. It trembles, high pitched whimpers seeping from it.
It does not dare move. It does not dare open its eyes.
[PoV: Green]
Green stares down at the trembling, glitching form of the video mimic. His throat feels tight, and his stomach wouldn’t stop knotting.
The others were looking at him, both shocked and confused. But they’d stopped, like he’d demanded, holding the mimic down on the taskbar. He wonders if they just hadn’t heard the words in all the chaos, or if they had and they’d just disregarded them.
Green couldn’t disregard them. They sounded far too upset, far too real, to be able to ignore it.
He waved for the others to get off of it. They hesitated, sharing wary looks. Orange, from his place on top using a drawn slab and his entire body weight to pin it down, gave him an uncertain look, “Are you sure…?”
He nodded, gesturing again. Slowly, cautiously, they all moved, stepping back. They held their tools at the ready, prepared just in case.
The mimic did not move. It just stayed there, shaking.
Green swallowed at the hardness in his throat, and took a step forward. And then another. He ignored the quiet voice to the side that spoke in a warning tone, “Green…”
He slowly kneels down beside the strange being, forcing himself not to flinch when it suddenly spasmed and glitched. It was curled up so tight, he could barely see its video head past his own weird unnatural arms. Arms that were shaking, trembling, quivering in what was most likely fear.
He raises a hand, hesitating for a moment before reaching out and awkwardly laying it on the mimic’s shoulder. It flinches, making him flinch too.
He swallows, wetting his lips. “Hey…hey it’s okay. I’m not gonna hurt you. Can…can you talk again? Can you tell us what’s wrong? C’mon, just talk to us, we don’t need to fight, its okay…”
The only response he gets is distorted audio that hurt his ears. He winced, unable to tell if there was a word lost somewhere in the mess of sound or not.
“Sorry, didn’t understand that. Can you try again? Please?”
More distorted noises, which he recognizes as cut and clipped pieces of the video’s audio, all jumbled up and altered. It sounded a little bit more intelligible, this time, but still nothing he could understand. Perhaps the mimic realized this, because it tried again, this time the ‘edits’ seemed more meaningful. Finally, Green could parse out distinct words among the sound.
“P̵l̸e̷a̵s̸e̴ ̸d̶o̵n̷’̵t̴ ̶d̷e̵l̵e̸t̷e̵ ̸m̸e̸.̷” its voice crackled and trailed of in a long noise. The others shift, sharing uncertain and wary looks between each other.
Except for Orange, who stares at the mimic with wide eyes, before a haunted, crushed look seems to overcome him. He deflates, the hand holding the pen tool dropping to his side.
“Cursors…” Green just barely hears him breathe.
Orange wasn’t alone in the sentiment; Green found himself feeling much the same. His chest squeezed painfully tight, and a sour taste wouldn’t leave the back of his throat.
“We won’t delete you. But you need to calm down, okay? Lets keep talking. Can you tell me why you’re angry? Its okay, I’ll listen, just try to tell me what’s upset you.” he says, keeping his tone level and kindly. It sounded fake to his ears, but he hoped that it wouldn’t to the mimic.
A shudder ran through the mimics form, a wave of static following it. Its color seemed to go haywire for a moment.
Soft warped audio came from the video, “Y̷o̶u̵ ̸t̵h̸r̷e̵w̶ ̶m̷e̴ ̷a̷w̶a̷y̷.̵ ̷W̸h̸y̸ ̶d̴i̸d̵ ̶y̸o̴u̵ ̸d̶o̶ ̴t̵h̶a̵t̵?̵”
Green flinched, squeezing his eyes shut as he tried to force down the surging feeling of guilt. Of course. Of course it was aware of what he’d done. Around him, the others shifted awkwardly.
“Well, I mean, your video wasn’t really good…” Red said, crossing his arms.
Yellow’s head whipped towards him, hissing, “RED!” He elbowed him.
Red winced, glaring back. “What?! It’s the truth!”
Blue and Orange eyed the mimic, wary of it becoming angry and attacking again. But it just seemed to shiver and curl up even tighter into itself.
“…̷W̴h̶y̶ ̵d̶i̴d̶n̷’̸t̷ ̸y̴o̴u̷ ̶m̵a̴k̵e̴ ̵m̸e̶ ̸g̸o̸o̴d̴?̸” It asked.
Green stared, floundering for a moment, then whirled around to look at Orange with wild eyes, mouthing ‘help!’
Orange startled, but then stepped closer, leaning down towards his ear. “How do you think I can help with this?” he whispered. Green grabbed him and pulled him down.
“You bring stuff to life all the time! You know how to deal with—with this sort of thing! What do I say?!” He whispered frantically into Orange’s ear. Orange shook his head.
“No I don’t! Nothing like this has even remotely happened with my drawings before!”
Green scowled, tugging him back down, hissing, “Well how did you explain to Bob how he sucked?!”
Orange jerked away, “Bob didn’t suck!”
Green glared, but felt a flinch beneath his hand, making it clear that the mimic had heard at least that remark. He turns back to it, eyes searching over it’s stuttering, glitching body as he tried to think of what to say. But for once, he was at a loss, he didn’t...he didn’t know how to handle this.
He swallowed, “W-well…we made some mistakes. With you. We thought that adding a whole bunch of effects and stuff would make the video better. But it…it didn’t. It just made it really cluttered and sort of…not nice to watch. We…we didn’t really know what we were doing, we’ve never really made a video before today, s-so we…messed up. A-and made something…not good.” he finished lamely. The words tasted like rotten flesh in his mouth.
The file was silent.
“S̸o̵ ̸I̶’̵m̵ ̸a̷ ̶m̶i̴s̴t̵a̶k̴e̷.̷” It said softly.
Green jerked back.
“No! No, that’s not what I meant, you’re not a-a…” he stuttered, but the surface of the file went completely black. The tricolor limbs suddenly sunk into the surface of the video, the rest of it’s ‘Green’ body swiftly following, leaving it a simple body-less video file once more. The display stuttered, its video flickering through several frames of the video, static branching off of it, before going black and blank once more.
Green stared down at it, dumbfounded for a moment, before he lowered his hand back onto the top of it. It flinched. Tears welled in his eyes.
“Shit. Shit. Oh cursors, what have we done?” Green choked, then started to sob. He collected the video file into his arms, curling around it. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. We didn’t know this could happen. We didn’t…we didn’t mean to hurt you. Please, I’m sorry.”
The file didn’t respond, only giving a faint few twitches as it was touched.
Orange dropped to the taskbar next to him, pressing up against his side. He rubbed a hand up and down Green’s back, trying to calm him as he cried. Blue sat on the other side, leaning his head on Green’s shoulder. Red sighed, his shoulders slumping, and he plopped down onto the taskbar, pulling off the hand tool.
“Can’t believe this. Why’s our lives so weird?”
Yellow tapped a hand to his chin, staring at the file.
“It is…strange. But, not entirely unexpected. Or, rather, unprecedented. We often cause things to behave in abnormal ways. We seem to exert a sort of influence onto things. Perhaps…perhaps this has happened because of how much of ourselves we’ve put into it? Both in terms of effort, but also literally. With the video footage. All of us are in the video, to a degree.” he mused, voice trailing into a low monotone as he theorized. “Perhaps we influenced the file so much that we…imparted something from ourselves into it, in a way? Created something, unintentionally.”
“This didn’t happen with the other video, and that was footage of us.” Red countered, crossing his arms.
Yellow shook his head, “Green didn’t spend nearly as much time editing that one as we all did on this one; or, er, them…?” he frowned, considering for a second before he shrugged, continuing, “Nor did we spend as much time removing the effects of the re-edit.”
Orange looked up at him, “Could the amount of time we waited have something to do with it? We waited almost six hours for their video to export, which could be extra time we could’ve ‘influenced’ it.”
Yellow hummed, “Possibly…”
“We didn’t reject the other two, also. Maybe emotions have something to do with it?” Blue supplied.
“…Potentially. If we inadvertently instilled something into or upon the file, it would have already been there when we discarded it. That rejection would hurt, and only get worse if it could see us watching the second version…and perhaps that hurt, that anger, would be enough to further fuel a sort of…manifestation. Using the means available to it.” Yellow said, gesturing with a hand. His head tilted, and a familiar distracted look creeped onto his face, making it clear that he wasn’t entirely done thinking.
Red huffed, leaning his cheek on his hand, “…Great. So we basically brought a video to actual life. Alan’s gonna kill us.” Blue rolled his eyes.
“Oh please, Orange brings things to life all the time. He’s used to it.”
Orange shifted, scratching the back of his head, “Not really; I’ve never made anything like this. Nothing so…sentient. This is, like, our level of liveliness. Alan’s only ever made things like that…”
Red perked up, “Maybe we should tell him? Maybe he’ll know what happened, and what we should do!” He threw his hands in the air.
Green, who had been listening quietly after the tears had slowed to a stop, raised his head.
“What do you mean, what we should do?”
Red tilted his head, frowning, “Exactly that…? It just tried to kill us, dude. And I don’t really trust it to not try again. Its still probably got a bunch of effects up its sleeves; I’m positive that not all of them fell out earlier.”
Green felt a quiver go through the file, a spark arcing off it, and he reflexively tightened his arms around it.
“We’re not deleting it.” He said lowly, voice bordering on a growl. He leveled a glare towards Red.
Red jerked back, “I didn’t say that we would! But we’ve gotta do something with it, Green!”
Green’s eyes flashed, “Like what, then?! Send it away?! We made it, Red! This is our doing! We can’t just—just throw it away, AGAIN! I won’t let that happen!” He shouted, teeth gnashing in a snarl.
Red gaped at him, “What’s gotten into you?!”
Green ducked his head, pressing his nose against the top of the file, “Didn’t you hear it earlier? Pleading to not be deleted?” He murmured, squeezing his eyes shut against the wetness threatening to gather again, “It was scared. Because it’s alive. Its alive, just like us. A-and we threw it away. Because it didn’t look good. We nearly deleted it.” He tightened his hold on the file, making it glitch a little, “It’s my fault. I started this. It’s mostly my video. It was right to be angry at me. We shouldn’t have taken things so far…It didn’t deserve it. It doesn’t deserve to be hurt more either.”
Red stared at him, dumbfounded.
“It punched you in the face, Green.”
“Yeah, and I fucking deserved it.” Green bit back.
“It might be dangerous…” Blue murmured.
“So’s Yellow with King’s staff.”
“It might be also dangerous in an unintentional way, too…That glitching might be a sign that its a danger to the computer itself.” Yellow remarked, “That alone might be a reason to ask Alan for help…”
Green was silent for a moment, turning things over in his head.
“…And what if Alan says it has to go? What then?” he questions softly.
Orange shook his head, “He won’t, not if we tell him its alive like us.”
“Or if we tell him you’re attached to it.” Red huffed.
Orange sighed, “Red, enough.” He leaned over Green’s arms, laying a hand on the video file, “Hey…We’re sorry for attacking you. Green’s right, we went a little too far…And sorry for throwing you away. We really didn’t know that you were, well, you. And for almost deleting you…I’m really sorry about that…Maybe now that we know about you, we can make it up to you, somehow?” He offered. The file remained silent and still, returning no response. Orange tried not to deflate, “We’re gonna talk to our Creator, when he gets up, okay? He’ll help us figure out what we should do with you, because we don’t really know what to do right now. Don’t worry, he’s super nice! Is that okay with you?”
The surface of the file remained dark for several long moments, before static appeared, the distorted and over-edited video following soon after. The display rapidly shifted through the video, occasionally stuttering or glitching.
“N̸o̷t̶ ̶g̴o̸i̵n̸g̶ ̵t̸o̷ ̶d̵e̷l̴e̶t̶e̵ ̸m̴e̸?̵” The file asked, sounding meek.
Green squeezed it again, shaking his head, “We won’t delete you. I promise. And we won’t let Alan delete you either; we’ll kick his ass if he even tries.”
“Yeah, you’re safe, now. We’re not gonna hurt you either.” Blue leaned across Green’s lap, offering a smile towards the file.
The file was quiet for a while before it decided to speak again, “B̸u̸t̸ ̸I̶’̵m̴ ̶n̶o̸t̶ ̸g̵o̴o̷d̶.̵”
Green glared at Red, who winced.
“That doesn’t matter. We don’t care anymore.” Yellow said with a shrug. The file was quiet.
“.̴.̴.̵B̷u̸t̷ ̷I̶’̶m̷ ̸a̴ ̵m̴i̶s̶t̵a̸k̵e̷.̸” It tried again.
Green shook his head again, “No you’re not. You’re you. And you’re ours. That’s all we care about.”
The file didn’t say anything, its display slowly playing through its video. And then Green felt a nudge pressing back into his front, the file wiggling a little deeper into his hold.
And he couldn’t help hugging back.