Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Green was always scarily quiet when walking, despite being one of the loudest in the group, just behind Red. They never tried to sneak up on people, it just happened. Ex: how they were approaching Yellow right then. They tapped Yellow on the shoulder, only for Yellow to shriek and instinctually sock them in the stomach.

“Cursors Green, you gotta stop doing that” Yellow managed to wheeze out while catching their breath from their aforementioned shriek.

Green meanwhile straightened themselves back up to a standing position. “Sorry, if you’re not too busy I have a question.”

After a quick glance towards the jumbled mess of redstone and iron machinery Yellow answered Green.

“I could use a break anyway, what’s up?”

“Have you seen Red talking to themself at all? I was walking by them and they were talking to the air, and when I asked them about it, they said that they were talking to their Beeper. I’m kind of concerned.”

Green asked their question, arms waving wildly the whole time they talked, like usual.

Yellow pondered the question a moment before answering.
“Are you sure Red didn’t make another Beeper and you missed it?”

A slight bout of annoyance flashed across Green's face before they continued talking.

“I swear, they were standing over by Blues farm, not a single animal in sight. I know that sometimes bees like to hang out over there, but there wasn’t anything today.”

“Okay, okay, I believe you. I know that sometimes Reds mobs die during our adventures, but usually they just spawn a new one and are fine. If they're hallucinating then it might have been affecting them more than we thought.”

Yellow at this point had started rubbing the collar of their lab coat with their thumb, something they did unconsciously whenever they were worried or thought too hard.

The duo weren’t too far from the farm, far enough that they could vaguely see Red but neither party would be able to hear the other talking. Sure enough, Red did look like they were talking to someone.

—

Red meanwhile had been having a very lovely and almost one sided conversation with their Beeper. Logically they knew that the Beeper had sacrificed itself during the fight against the lucky block part 2: electric boogaloo, but it was so good to see them again that they didn’t really care.

It was weird however, that when Green had talked to them earlier, they hadn’t seen the Beeper. The beeper was right there. Sure they were kind of transparent, but not enough that it wasn’t visible.

The realization hit Red like a truck.

“Why are you see through?”

The Beeper, much to its credit as a semi sentient being, buzzed around for a minute before falling to the ground, landing on its back, and laying there for a couple of seconds before flying back up and making a loop around Red.

“Huh.”

Red commented on the apparently meaningful gesture that they did not understand in the slightest.

“Maybe I'm just tired. It is pretty late, and Sec’s already in bed. Although Sec does go to bed a good bit earlier than everyone else, so I don’t know if I can use them as a basis for when I need to be doing things.”

Red rambled half to themself, half to their Beeper, unaware of the eyes following them as they started heading back towards the house to get ready for bed.

It was only when they passed Yellow and Green that they managed to catch a glimpse of the concerned looks on their faces before the duo regained control over their expressions.

“I think I’m gonna go to bed early guys, I’ll see you tomorrow!”

Yellow and Green only nodded as Red skipped their way into the house and to their room, in typical Red fashion.

Chapter Text

Red awoke the next morning to find that their translucent friend problem had worsened. Gotten better? Either way, flying alongside the Beeper were two parrots who seemed way too ecstatic for a normal Tuesday. Not only were the parrots pulling every somewhat easy aerial stunt in the book, but they were also flying through Red’s furniture.

Red blinked, realizing the oddity of the situation.
“Y’know, I don’t think you guys did that last time I saw you. Must be some pretty advanced tricks if you’re able to go through…” A yawn left them as they started to move off of their bed. “...My chair. I’ll have to ask purple about that, they’re pretty much the expert on all of that flying stuff.”

Walking out of the building made it obvious that they had missed something, as Green and Yellow were engaged in a physical fight (fairly normal), Blue looked like they had eaten just a smidge too much netherwort (normal but concerning nonetheless), and Sec was finishing up what looked like the last of their breakfast (why were they up already?).

“Morning Red! You don’t usually sleep in, you feeling okay?”

Oh. Sec wasn’t up early, They were up late.

“Anyway, there's still some pancakes for you! Blue made them before they….” Second gestured to the slightly ragdolled Blue who, in their defense, was recuperating incredibly fast.

“I’m okay! Must have just been extra tired yesterday. And pancakes sound delicious, thanks Blue!”

Blue, who now looked surprisingly well adjusted for someone who was doing drugs at 7:30 in the morning, started talking about chocolate chips or something Red didn’t care to catch as they grabbed their pancakes and sat down to watch lemon and lime fight.

“So…what are they even fighting about?” Red asked, mouth full of Chocolate chip pancakes.

Second looked up from where he was cleaning his place at their little breakfast spot. “We don’t actually know, they were already going at it when we got up.”

“I think I’m gonna leave them alone actually, my animals aren’t gonna be happy that they’re getting fed late and I gotta do that before someone or something gets hurt.” Red proceeded to shove the rest of their pancakes in their mouth, much to the chagrin of Blue, before sauntering off to go feed Ruben and everyone else in the barn.

“Wha- that was like two whole pancakes! They’re gonna get indigestion!”

Sec just gave a small hum as they watched their other two friends duke it out over cursor knows what.

—

Walking into the barn was almost overstimulating with the amount of new(old?) animals inside of it. It definitely didn’t help that a good amount of them were the same translucent as the parrots and Beeper, and that they weren’t there yesterday.

A translucent pig that seemed to have phantom potion effect bubbles coming from it rushed over to their side, going to headbut their leg and instead going right through it.

Red stood completely still as a weird and frankly gross feeling started in their leg before fizzing out a moment later. Whatever was going on clearly wasn’t normal, but Red surprisingly didn’t have the energy to think about it too hard.

Which was…..weird. They had slept more than they normally do, had woken up with a good amount of energy, and despite the small bit of indigestion from swallowing two pancakes basically whole, they felt pretty good.

No matter how tired they were, they did have regular, opaque animals to feed. And thus, they started on their morning chores, thinking about taking a nap afterwards.

Ruben especially seemed like he hadn’t been fed in years, even though Red had fed him last night just like they always do. Ruben has always been a bit overdramatic.

Chapter Text

Blue watched as Red walked over to their barn, grabbing some wheat, seeds, and carrots on their way over. It was weird and frankly concerning that they had gotten up so late, the last time any of the sticks (other than Second) overslept was that time Yellow had gotten sick from accidentally inhaling too much redstone dust.

Red probably wouldn’t want to make too much of a fuss if they were sick, because as preformative and dramatic as they were, they never wanted to slow down the group's activities.

Having ‘extra’ healing and regen potions on hand could help Red without making it obvious that Blue knew something was up. They could just say that they got the ingredients mixed up and had an extra batch that they didn’t have space to store.

The activity for that morning decided, Blue got up and started on the awkward potions, resisting the urge to take a bite of the netherwort before putting it in the brewing stand.

Blue did want to ask about Red while the potions were cooking, so they walked back over to Sec after adding some glistering melon slices to the potion.

“Hey is Red doing okay? They seemed kinda off this morning.”

Green and Yellow walked over from where they had just finished their spat.

“They’re going crazy! Do you know how many times I’ve caught them talking to themselves and when I ask them about it they say it’s one of their dead pets? Three times! Even you don’t hallucinate that much on netherwort!”

“I don’t hallucinate at all, thank you very much. How dare you even insinuate that Green?”

“On Sunday you kept saying that Red had cat ears.”

“They did! And that's not the point! The point is that if something is going on with Red we should probably figure out what it is.”

The group stood (and sat) around their makeshift table in silence as none of them really knew how to deal with someone going crazy. The best they had was Blue’s medical knowledge, and that mostly revolved around minecraft potions and basic first aid.

“Mayyyybe they’re just really tired. Alan said that when he stays up too late working on an animation he’ll start seeing spiders that aren't there. And if it gets really bad, we can always ask Alan to check Reds code.”

Sec did have a point Blue thought, but it had seemed like Red had been sleeping fine before last night, other than the semi-frequent 3am raves they had.

“I mean, I haven’t noticed anything wrong with their sleeping other than last night, but I wasn’t paying that much attention to it specifically so maybe I missed something.” Yellow mentioned, mirroring Blues thoughts.

Almost as if on cue, the gang watched as Red let out a really big yawn before putting away the leftover animal food and started to walk back to where the group was hanging out. Blue realized that they had to get the potions and managed to get everything bottled up before starting some more potion bases and walking speedwalking back towards the group.

“Red! Good to see you! I have a favor if you don’t mind?”

Red looked slightly startled by the request, but nodded anyway.

“What is it?”

“Well you see, Green and I were gonna do a thing tonight and I was making night vision potions, but I got the ingredients wrong and now I have all these extra health potions. I don’t have enough space to store them and I don’t really need them anyway, so would you mind holding on to them for me?”

Yellow looked confused, obviously not catching onto what Blue was doing. “I didn’t know that you guys were-”

Green punched them, effectively shutting them up. “Yes, the thing we are doing later, the one we already have enough health potions for.”

“What was that for? I just wanted to know why-” Green punched them again, this time pushing them away from the group and initiating the second physical fight between the two of the day.

Red was a little unsettled by the violence but it wasn’t anything that was abnormal, so it was probably fine. They did find it weird that Blue messed up their potions however, as they were typically really good at keeping all of their everything organized.

“You messed up potions?”

Blue managed to put a slightly embarrassed look on their face before responding. “Yeah, I should probably stop eating netherwort while doing important stuff.”

Oh. Blue had done weirder stuff on netherwort so messing up some potions because of it wasn’t that unbelievable. And if these were extra then they could see if using one helped with the fact that they were seeing weird translucent versions of their pets.

“Of course! I can put these in my room, I was thinking of going to lie down anyway. Do you guys think you could watch my parrots for a while? They woke me up this morning.”

“Your Parrots?” Second asked, looking around with a concerned expression.

“Yeah it's… the ones that messed up the texture pack, remember?”

“Of course, your parrots. How could I forget? Yeah we can…watch them for a bit. At least make sure that they don’t turn the house into a mish mash of random blocks again. You go have a rest.”

“Thanks guys!” Red went back to their room and downed a potion, not noticing the silent conversation and worried looks that came from their friends as they left.

Chapter Text

Blue stood, switching between staring at Second and watching Green and Yellow tumble. Red sleeping in had already been concerning, but maybe Green had been right about Red completely going crazy.

“Hey Sec?”

“Yes?”

“How in the WORLD are we supposed to babysit parrots that don’t exist!”

The sound of Blue yelling was apparently enough to distract the other two, Green helping Yellow to their feet before rejoining the group.

“I would assume that we hang around here, tell Red everything went well when they get up, and hope that their hallucinations don’t give it away that all we really did was talk about them behind their back.”

Yellow looked at the group grumpily and slightly confused. “I didn’t know that you guys were doing something tonight, and I still don’t know why you punched me over it.”

“Yellow, Blue just said that to get Red to take those healing potions. We aren’t actually doing anything. Well I am, just not with Blue specifically.”

Looking slightly embarrassed, yellow started to fidget with their collar. “Oh.”

“Yeah. Do you think you could actually make some of those night vision potions Blue? I might need them.”

Blue started moving towards the brewing setup and grabbing ingredients. “Of course. Does anyone have any gold? I have the carrots, but I ran out of gold trading with the piglins the other day.”

Not even a second(hah) later, Sec pulled a couple of gold blocks from their inventory, tossing them to Blue. “Here. What are you gonna be doing tonight Green?”

This time it was Green's turn to look embarrassed. “Purple invited me to go out with them tonight.”

“Purple invited you out huh?” The smugness and interest blatant on Sec’s face betrayed the nonchalance in their voice.

“It’s not like that! They invited me to go phantom hunting with them. Apparently you can use phantom membranes to fix elytra, and Purple is getting low on stock.”

Blue came back with the night vision after starting a new batch of awkward potions, a habit they had gotten into so that they could quickly brew potions if they ever needed to.

“I’ve got three of these guys, if you wanted I could also make you some slow falling potions? I know how Purple’s flying can get at times.”

“That might be good actually. I trust them, I just also know what it’s like to run into a cobblestone wall at 40mph, and that is not fun.”

Blue nodded and headed back to the brewing station for a third time that day. Somehow Blue themselves had gotten to the point where occasionally when they would eat something it would give them its designated potion effect, but the rest of the color gang still had to use actual potions.

Slow falling potions did use phantom membranes funnily enough, but Green with their raves and Yellow with their late night projects attracted enough phantoms that blue always had enough. That was probably one of the reasons Purple had invited Green to go phantom hunting actually, although Blue wasn’t gonna point that out.

Blue bottled up the potions and once again started another batch of potion bases, grabbing a small handful of netherwart as they went to give the potions to Green. At this point Yellow had gone to work on whatever crazy redstone contraption had their attention this week, which meant now was the perfect time to just do whatever.

“Here you go! Need anything else before we start babysitting fake birds?”

Sec looked alarmed briefly before shaking themselves off. “I honestly forgot we were supposed to be doing that.”

“Well you best get settled in because we have a long day of trying to 'keep track of' invisible, silent, and untouchable parrots.”

With that Green went off to get ready for their date or something, while Sec and Blue sat together, Sec dozing off and Blue slowly munching on their snack.

Chapter Text

Sec had a problem. Multiple problems really, but one really stuck out. Red was acting weird. This was bad because a member of the color gang acting weird never ended well.

Based on past experiences, sec had a couple ideas of situations that could be happening.

1: Red was possessed by Herobrine(again).

2: Red had found a weird, modded block, gotten possessed by said block, and now was lying in wait in order to come up with a plan to possess the rest of the gang.

3: They had suddenly gotten addicted to something and were hiding it from everyone else.

4: They had started an internet career, slowly becoming obsessed with fame and attention to the point it was all they could think about.

5: They had watched all their friends die in battle, before (allegedly) unlocking world ending superpowers, and (allegedly) using them to take revenge on the person who killed their friends, ending the battle by (allegedly) reviving their friends from nothing.

6: Red secretly had an incredibly convoluted relationship with their parents(they came from a website), were trying to form a parental bond with their boss(none of the stickfigures worked in the typical sense of the word), before betraying said boss because they found a friend/love interest who understands them and convinced them that they shouldn’t help their boss commit mass genocide(thank cursors), and almost died before getting adopted by their former boss now father.

Okay, maybe 5&6 weren’t that plausible, but it’s good to consider all of your options.

While Red could be possessed again, it seemed like they were on good terms with Herobrine now after they had started taking weekly classes at the monster school. So maybe possessed, but not by Herobrine.

Sec hadn’t seen a lucky block in forever, and had noticed none of the typical signs of lucky block possession when talking to Red, so they decided to rule that out.

Addiction could be a possibility, Blue did always seem to get tired after eating too much netherwart. However, the only thing Sec had seen Red eat at all was the chocolate chip pancakes earlier that morning, so if Red had gotten their hands on drugs or buttons or something, they were better at hiding it than Blue was.

Green was the only one of the color gang that regularly went on the internet, and the only reason Red had a phone at all was to text their friends from school. So sudden obsession with internet fame? Probably not.

New powers could be possible. A lot has happened to Red that could have changed their code, or just done something to them in general, so it couldn’t be fully ruled out. And if that's what has been making them so tired, it might be something Sec might want to look into further as well.

It may sound sad but the only family Red really has at all is the color gang plus Purple and King orange, so a strangely complicated family based background is off the table.

This gives Sec three options to work with. Red is possessed, Red secretly has gotten addicted to something, or Red gained some sort of powers.

Sec looked around, realizing that they had actually gotten incredibly hungry. It turns out that pondering dilemmas that could negatively impact most of the people in your life takes a lot of brain power.

Anyway, Blue was clearly not in any sort of state to make lunch, so Sec walked over to the kitchen setup and pulled out Blue’s cookbook. They had pancakes that morning, so maybe something savory would be better for lunch.

They decided on classic ramen noodles as it was a fan favorite, and got started making the ingredients, only stopping to check the time in the corner of Alanspc. 11:45.

A perfect amount of time to make things so that the group could eat about noon, if not slightly closer to 12:30.

Sec got to work, not noticing how the incredibly high Blue had started to track something with their eyes.

A very sleepy voice called out from where Blue was.

“Hey Sec?”

“Yes Blue?” Second replied, honestly not having enough energy to deal with out-of-it Blue shenanigans.

“What are Red’s parrots doing?”

“What? Nothing, they’re not real, remember?” Concern suddenly giving Second enough energy to deal with out-of-it Blue shenanigans.

“Oh yeah. But why are they doing backflips?”

“Okay, that is enough netherwart for you. Consider yourself officially cut off.” Sec walked over to Blue taking the very small amount of netherwart that was left out of their hand before they could react.

“Nooo….” Blue let out a very weak protest, before going back to hallucinating Red’s dead birds.

Sec sighed and finished making the ramen, hoping that maybe after lunch things would be a little bit more tolerable.

Chapter Text

During the fight against King Orange, none of the sticks had died. Sure, everyone got really hurt and Purple had even gotten swept up in the beam that KO’s staff made, but KO had gone and saved Purple, and the rest of the gang managed to get the staff through the nether portal and fix everything!

Knowing what actually happened during the fight did not change the fact that Red was currently in the midst of that final battle, watching all of their friends die.

The only thing that it could be was a nightmare. The color gang was on somewhat good terms with KO, they hung out with purple regularly, and most of all, Minecraft still existed.

Even with that, everything felt so real. Red could hear the deafening roar of the beam that the staff produced, they could see the fear, determination, and desperation on the faces of their friends, and they could feel tears streaming down their face as burning pixels were pulled away from their body.

Red had been at the forefront of the last attack, the one that ended with the gang strewn across the floor and glitching violently. Which meant that now, Purple was supposed to face KO, get swept up and sent away, and KO was supposed to drop the staff and go after Purple.

That's what was supposed to happen.

But King didn't.

King Orange stood there, unrelenting, as each member of the color gang tried to get to them, and couldn’t.

First Purple, their wings disintegrating much faster than the rest of their body.

Then Green, who tried to use a fishing rod to pull themselves towards KO and missed.

Second was next in line, but Red couldn't. They couldn’t let another one of their friends get turned into nothing but pixels. So, they pushed past Second. Red had been strongest when they were fighting with Herobrine, but Herobrine was gone now. Despite the crippling pain they moved forward, using tnt and a shield to get above the beam and actually get close enough to punch KO in the face.

Maybe it would have worked if Red still had a weapon that did any sort of damage, but they didn’t, and King moved the beam to encompass them.

Red didn’t see how Second's eyes went green as they disintegrated, the only thing they saw was the face of a stick who had lost themselves completely to a cause, an idea.

—

Red actually jumped out of bed, body still tensed and ready for battle, knocking stuff over as they realized where they were and let themselves flop back onto the bed.

They could still feel phantom pain as they calmed themselves down. This wasn’t the first nightmare they had gotten about the battle, and it probably wouldn’t be the last.

They were never fun, but Red had at least gotten better at dealing with the aftermath.

Red looked over at their newly acquired stash of health potions, considering but ultimately deciding not to drink one. They weren’t really hurt physically, so it wouldn’t do anything anyway.

Potion or no potion, it wouldn’t do them any good to just rot away in their room, so they got up and made their way out to where Sec was finishing up a batch of ramen. Red had almost hoped that the parrots would be gone, but alas, there they were, trying to eat (or at least peck at) said ramen and failing miserably because they went through the bowl.

Red whistled and the parrots begrudgingly stopped terrorizing Sec’s cooking and flew over to Red, the whistle also alerted Sec and Blue to their presence.

“Oh! Great timing Red, I just finished the ramen! We just gotta get Yellow and Green then we can eat.”

“It looks really good! Sorry that the birds were messing with it. Do you want me to grab Green or Yellow?”

“Your birds were… It’s fine, they didn’t do any damage. Yellow is probably either in their room or working on the roller coaster again, so if you could go grab them that would be great.”

“You got it boss!” Red flashed a big grin and sauntered off, parrots in tow.

This left Sec to go actually find Green, as they had given red the easier job. Yellow tended to stick to a couple regular spots when not adventuring, but Green could be anywhere.

“Or I could be smart about this and just text them. There’s a good chance that they’re on their phone.”

Sure enough, sending a quick message to Green over text resulted in them getting a thumbs up emoji back. With nothing else to do, Sec dished up the ramen and added the eggs, chicken and other garnishes, specifically leaving the netherwart out of Blues ramen this time.

Chapter Text

Lunch went pretty well all things considered. Once Red and Yellow returned from where Yellow had been working on something involving command blocks, and Green had come out from wherever they had been, Sec handed out the bowls and everyone had a fairly good meal.

Blue of course had to be propped up initially, but getting some food in them seemed to do wonders for sobering them up, at least a little bit.

That was, until the gang had started to clean up.

“Do you guys think Herobrine would let me bring my Beeper to school tomorrow? I think it’s getting jealous that I’m hanging out with the parrots more than it, and maybe Herobrine can help me figure out why it’s translucent.”

Sec shared a quick look of concern with the other three not-going crazy members of the color gang.

“The Beeper is translucent?”

“Yeah, it’s kinda weird. Y’know, that's probably why you didn’t see it last night, Green.”

Green gave a very serious looking nod. “Probably.”

“I think that it would be wonderful if Herobrine could help you with your translucent pets. Here, put your bowl in the chest so I can take down the table.”

The sticks did as they were told and Sec took out their axe to destroy the temporary table, just like they always did after meals.

The table went down and into the chest with the bowls, alongside all of the other non edible mealtime essentials that were kept in there, mostly for the convenience of having all of those types of items in one spot.

Red did have an activity planned for that day, and just because they got a late start on it doesn’t mean it wasn’t gonna get done.

“I’m gonna go build a pen for my striders in the nether today, does anyone need anything, other than netherwart, from the nether?”

“Oh! I’m actually pretty low on quartz, and that’s something I need for my restone stuff, so if you run into any please grab it.”

“Okay, quartz for redstone, anything else? No? Well you guys have fun here, I’m gonna go hang out with some chronically cold lava cubes with legs.”

Red left before anyone was able to say much else, but that worked perfectly for Sec, who wanted to talk to the rest of the color gang about what they had concluded.

“Alright team, it’s theory time. What in the world is going on with Red.”

“I still think they’re going crazy. To be honest, with all of the stuff we’ve been through, it was only a matter of time before one of us lost it.”

“Does anyone other than Green have any theories?”

Blue had taken to leaning on Yellow so that they could fully upright. “Maybe it’s some sort of trauma response. Green wasn’t lying when they said we’ve been through a lot.”

“That’s a good point, I’ll add it to my list!’

Green actually looked up from their phone at that statement. “Wait, you already have a list? Why are you asking us about it then?”

“Because, you guys think of things that I miss. I had three ideas of what might have happened, and now I have four. Blue’s idea is actually the most likely thing to be happening right now.”

Yellow pulled out a book and quill. “What’s the rest of the list?”

“One, Red got possessed again somehow. Two, they've started doing some sort of drugs and it’s causing them to hallucinate. Or three, Red suddenly developed a new ability and we have to figure out what it is.”

Yellow had been writing down what Second was saying, probably adding their own notes as well.

“Okay, I think that we need to watch Red more before we can actually determine anything. I’m also gonna start writing down what we already know about the situation. If nothing else we can consult King about everything, they’re old and have probably dealt with stuff like this before.”

“Game plan: we need to start watching Red. I’m gonna go hang out with them while they build their strider pens, and after that someone else can take a turn. That good with you guys?”

Green, Blue, and Yellow nodded as Sec announced the plan, content to go back to doing their own projects, except for Blue who was dragged into doing redstone with Yellow.

Chapter Text

Green had taken a shift babysitting Red right after Second and unlike Sec, had decided to mainly stalk Red for a while instead of interacting with them.

Actually it was less that Green decided it would be better to watch from afar, and more that Yellow had lectured Green about how “Interacting with a subject” can “influence an observational study”.

So Green physically stalked Red for a good two to three hours.

Nothing super out of the ordinary happened, if you don’t count Red talking to and interacting with nothing as out of the ordinary. A lot of that happened.

And of course, Green wrote everything (most things) down in the notebook Yellow had given them after their lecture on proper observational study standards.

They hadn’t actually been paying very much attention.

It was fine though, they just had to pass the torch on to Blue, and then they could gear up to go meet Purple for phantom hunting.

Green quickly stopped by Blue’s room to drop off the notebook before going to their room and grabbing their stuff, organizing everything neatly in their inventory. Purple would probably have a shulker box, but the rest of the color gang didn’t actually use very many items from the end.

After setting up a sword, pickaxe, regular axe, and fishing rod on the left side of their hotbar, and a water bucket, night vision potion, and a slow falling potion on the right right side, Green climbed up the roof of their house and into the file with the nether portal.

Going through the connecting nether portal led them to the meeting spot they had decided on over text yesterday, and a quick glance to their phone giving them the information that they were about ten minutes early.

Which was good! Purple was punctual to a scary degree so getting somewhere before them was always the safest option.

And sure enough, ten minutes later on the dot, Purple swooped down with an elegance that seemed to follow them everywhere, an elegance that made Green wonder if the prince moniker hadn’t been too far fetched after all.

“Hey.”

“Hi! I have the night vision potions. I don’t think we’re gonna need them just yet, but you can have yours for when we do.” Green gave Purple the potion in their hotbar, swiftly replacing it with one of the ones in their inventory.

“I’ve only got two per, but that should be enough for us to get a good amount of phantom membranes.”

Purple nodded as the duo heard the telling shriek of a phantom, and the hunt officially began.

Green stretched out their arms and Purple picked them up and shot off a rocket, an action that the pair had done often enough that it almost felt like second nature.

Once sufficiently high up, Green spotted a phantom and wrapped their fishing line around it, Purple dropping them once the line had secured. Green allowed themselves to fly underneath the phantom, using momentum to get on top of it as it tried to adjust to the sudden and unexpected weight.

From there it was just a matter of stabbing the phantom until it died and moving the fishing line to the next one before repeating the process.

They noticed that Purple had fallen into a similar rhythm, only ever stopping their battle to catch Green if they fell too far. Green of course responded in kind, using the phantoms, momentum, or whatever else to boost Purple higher into the air or away from those weirdly generated floating islands.

By the time the second(hah) potion had worn off, the team had accumulated quite a lot of phantom membranes, with the majority going to Purple, but Green taking a couple as well in order to repay Blue for the slow falling potions.

They had actually used some of the potions when one of the phantoms managed to knock them into each other, sending them spiraling to the ground, so Green decided that the potions had been a worthy investment.

Afterwards, both had been too tired to say much, so they shared a small snack and a high five before going back to their respective homes and to bed.

Chapter Text

Red always got to school slightly later than most of their friends, but that was just because Alanspc was pretty far away from the school, even after taking a shortcut through the nether. It didn’t help that the Beeper was not cooperating, despite the fact that it wanted to hang out with Red today.

So Red arrived a solid five minutes after the bell, Beeper trailing behind them as they tried to sneak to their desk without Herobrine noticing.

This of course did not work, as you can’t get anything past Herobrine.

“Good morning Red, I’m glad you could make it to class today.”

Red gave up on their over exaggerated sneaking and briskly walked over to their desk, waving at their friends as they went.

Herobrine finished writing on the board and turned around to look at the class, instead noticing the bee/creeper hybrid that was floating around Red. With a sigh, he turned back around and changed the writing on the board from ‘Twenty-one practical uses for boats’, to ‘parent teacher conferences’.

Red didn’t know what parent teacher conferences were, but based on the reactions of the rest of their classmates, they were not something fun.

“Okay class, everyone is going to need to bring a parent or guardian for conferences at 5:30 tonight. If your parent or guardian is not available tonight, talk to me and we can schedule another time to meet. Any questions?”

Red raised their hand. “So, who can qualify as a parent or guardian?”

This was apparently the wrong thing to say, as some of the mobs started giving them weird looks. Including Herobrine.

“Red, please tell me you have a legal guardian.”

“I live on this guy's computer, does he count?”

“You know what Red, come talk to me after class. We still have a lesson to get to.”

Red was a lot smarter than most people gave them credit for. Sure, they were impulsive, distractable, and slightly childish, but they would argue that those traits were pretty common for 15 year olds. They obviously weren’t as book smart as Yellow, or as good at reading people as most of the color gang, but they picked things up quickly.

For example, twenty-one practical uses for boats! Who knows when that could come in handy? There was a reason Red had signed themselves up for school, and although it was like 90% so that they could see their yellow team friends more often, they did actually like learning.

Red was definitely smart enough to use their lunch break to text the color gang about what had happened at the beginning of class. Although it was less a conversation and more Red asking the question in the group chat and getting three dots as a response from everyone else.

They put their phone away after a minute deeming the rest of the group unhelpful, and scarfed down the rest of their lunch(courtesy of Blue) before going back to class for the hands-on portion of things.

The assignment was another race, this time a challenge to see which team could get to the end point with the least amount of damage taken by using the previously learned practical uses for boats.

Although the other teams did try to sabotage Red’s group by trapping the enderman in the boats, Red was able to use that to their advantage by getting the rest of the team into the boat and tickling the enderman with a feather, causing the whole boat and everyone in it to teleport randomly until the group made it past the finish line with only half a heart of damage collectively.

The end of class came exceedingly quickly however, leaving Red alone in the school to have a talk with Herobrine about legal guardians and translucent pets.

Chapter Text

Red had been in many different life threatening scenarios, any of which they would prefer to the awkwardness that came with standing next to Herobrine's desk as he finished getting his stuff from class picked up.

Herobrine grabbed some paper and sat down at his desk.

“I was looking through your paperwork during lunch and it has come to my attention that you signed yourself up for this school. I don’t know how I missed it the first time, but the past is in the past.Either way, you are still a teenager and should have some sort of parent or guardian based on what I know about stickfigure society.”

The papers got shuffled around a bit before he continued.

“You do need to bring at least one person with you to tonight's parent teacher conference. Someone, ideally an adult, who is responsible for you. We will be discussing your schoolwork and whatnot, but also about…well, you see your little friend there right?”

Red nodded.

“I actually brought it to school today to ask you about it! I don’t really know why it’s translucent, and my friends keep looking at me like I’m crazy whenever I talk about it. Plus the last time I saw this guy a lot of bad things were happening, so I thought it had been dead in all honesty.”

A look of guilt flashed across Herobrine’s face.

“You weren’t exactly wrong in your assumption that it had died. It isn’t common knowledge as it doesn’t happen super often, but when I possess someone sometimes that person will end up experiencing…side effects afterwards.”

Red started to think it was more common than Herobrine wanted to admit when he pulled out an actual pamphlet. Like, it had possible side effects, common experiences, quotes, the whole shabang.

“I guess it would make sense then that I got some of the side effects, especially after you possessed me twice!"

Red said in a half joking tone, idly flipping through the limited pages of the pamphlet.

“What?”

Looking up from the pamphlet Red was able to see Herobrine looking absolutely confused.

“I never possessed you after the fight, I make it a point to not possess people more than once.”

This time it was Red’s turn to look confused.

“Yeah, but before that, when I had the Minecraft icon for the first time. I thought you remembered because you used the same types of attacks both times.”

“Oh Mojang, I didn’t realize that was also you. I’ve seen so many different shades of red stickmen that I assumed… It's fine. Your symptoms might be somewhat stronger than normal, but nothing bad should happen. I think that most of the information is in the pamphlet, so you and your bee creeper thing should go home and sort out who you want to bring to the conference tonight. Remember, 5:30.

The beeper, which had been slowly circling around Red for most of the conversation, took up a more stationary place near Red's arm.

“Sounds good! I definitely have to go talk to my friends about this, so I will see you later!”

Red left, not noticing how their teacher basically collapsed in on himself after they exited the room.

Their head was still reeling from the new info they had been given, making them a bit distracted on the walk home.

The beeper did actually cooperate with them this time, so the journey went faster than the one they made that morning. Even with the attack from the ghast that actually blew up part of the bridge.

All too soon and not nearly fast enough, Red found themselves walking through the nether portal into the folder on alanspc.

Chapter Text

I initially put 21 practical uses for boats as what Herobrine wrote as a joke, and because it seems like a monster school lesson, but here we are.

1. Get across bodies of water

2. Trap mobs

3.Transport villagers

4. Building decorations

5. Lava parkour

6. Ice bridge

7. Stand on one to go fishing

8. Boat clutch

9. Entity cramming

10. Ride a boat down a mountain to negate fall damage

11. If you place a boat near a one block gap side and put water on a specific area, you can push the boat a little into the wall and enter it, then exiting will put you at the other side of the wall.

12. Fuel in a furnace

13. Totem pole

14. Sell it to a fisherman villager

15. By pushing blocks on top of a chest boat with pistons, you can make a secret chest

16. Boat elevator

17. If you place a boat outside of iron bars you can click the boat and teleport outside of your cage

18. Turn them into a bridge

19. Catch a bunch of mobs in boats and put them in a pit outside your friends house

20. Use a boat as a seat on a flying machine

21. Combine it with a minecart

Chapter Text

Every Wednesday afternoon had the same schedule, with four fifths of the color gang setting up a spot to hang out and sit until Red got home from school, and when they did the gang would have a snack and talk about what everyone did that day, mostly Red.

Which is why Red was not surprised to see their friends having a makeshift picnic outside the house, a checkered blanket spread out underneath them.

It didn’t take long for Red to make their way over to join them, grabbing the basket and digging through it as soon as they sat down, catching a snippet of the conversation they had been having.

“...See if Purple would know anything about it? Hi Red!” Second greeted.

“Hey! What are we asking Purple about?” They pulled a slice of watermelon out of the basket, taking a bite out of it after asking their question.

Blue was actually the one to respond. “We wanted to ask them about your parent teacher conferences, they’re from the outernet so they’ll probably know more about it.”

Green nodded. “Yeah, I think they mentioned going to school before, so they’ll definitely know about it.”

The watermelon rind went into Reds inventory so that they could put it into the composter later.

“I actually talked to Herobrine about the parent teacher conferences and my beeper. Good news, I’m not going crazy! Bad news, apparently I have to bring someone who is responsible for me to the conference.”

A slightly miffed looking Green slipped Yellow a diamond, who pocketed it before anyone could see the transaction.

Sec pondered for a minute. “I mean, you’re pretty responsible for yourself.”

“That's what I said! Apparently, ‘Teenagers’ are supposed to have ‘legal guardians’. I think it’s a stickcity thing.”

“If it’s a stickcity custom then Purple will definitely know about it.” Blue pointed out.

Green pulled out their phone. “I’ll text them about it, but first, why are you not crazy?”

This prompted Red to pull out the pamphlet and start explaining.

“Okay, so you guys know how my beeper actually died during that big battle with the lucky block?”

“Right”

“So apparently, when Herobrine possesses someone they can experience side effects afterwards. Like seeing ghosts. It’s written here on this little inside part if you want to look at it.”

Yellow took the pamphlet from Red, squinting to read the section they pointed out.

“He gave you this? How often does this happen that he has one of these ready?”

“He didn’t really elaborate on how often exactly, but I would think that it’s happened a lot since he had to make a pamphlet.”

This garnered a concerned look from Second. “So you can just…see ghosts now?”

Red shrugged. “I guess. Herobrine said that we could discuss specifics at the parent teacher conference.”

“Okay well then I definitely want to come to the conference. I can count as somewhat responsible for you right?”

“Me too!”

“Yep”

“I’m coming also.”

The color gang unanimously decided that they would be going to that parent teacher conference, even though none of them were Red’s parents or guardians.

Blue looked at Red. “What time is it? I need to know if I should make dinner before or after it.”

Red took the pamphlet back from yellow, stashing it in their inventory.

“It’s at 5:30, so we should probably do dinner beforehand. Have you heard back from Purple yet Green?”

Green looked up from their phone, where they had obviously been reading something.

“Yeah, they mostly seemed confused. Said they forgot we didn’t know a lot of stuff about stickcity customs and whatnot. But they said that it should be fine for the rest of us to go to the conference instead of a parent so that's good.”

Sec nodded. “That is good! Blue, did you want any help with the dinner?”

Blue was standing up as sec asked the question.

“I think I’m good, is everyone fine with pizza tonight?”

Everyone was fine with pizza for dinner.