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Slushly believes he's a good person, whether it's saving people he doesn't even know the names of or killing a tyrant for the betterment of the server. The people revere him as their savior—their hero, a title he takes in stride.
Pootoot is no such hero. Living in some boring hut in the middle of nowhere with his underlings, a monotonous existence of an utter nobody with a desire to break free from it.
And that chance came in the form of news of Wyll's fall. Beaten quite horribly by a chivalrous hero and his friends, of course Pootoot's interest was piqued.
He felt many things about the news. Envy , disgust, confusion, but among all of them remained a single question. Something that relit the fire that lived within himself.
—what would it take to break this “hero” ?
He hated cliches the most, and seeing a living cliche before his eyes? It made him want to take everything Slushly had and break them into tiny pieces for him to swallow, just to see him fall to his knees and give up that useless heroism of his.
And so he did.
To great lengths, in fact.
“Why even do all of this effort for some random guy..” one of his loyal underlings, Abovetrain asked whilst shoveling snow for one of their sets. “He's not some random guy, he's the “hero” of this story!” Pootoot scolded.
“We could just trap him and torture him if you wanted to see him break, yknow.” his hair stuck to his skin with all the sweat accumulated from such hard labour. “But where's the fun in that? and torturing people is an underhanded and barbaric method.” Pootoot stands up to take a shovel from the chest.
Pootoot stabs his shovel to the snow, shovelling it frantically. “Do you think this is some stupid horror movie angsty teens watch? no! of course not, there's no point in breaking a hero if it means I'm dirtying my own hands.”
“Whatever you say dude.” They stay in silence for the rest of their shoveling.
Days and days pass by, and before you know it Pootoot's finished crafting his masterpiece of a plan for his star of the show. He won't spoil the details, as the fun lies in the unpredictability of what's to come. ‘make the viewers the Sherlock Holmes to their Watson’ he mumbles.
It was gonna be his magnum opus among all his stories, the story of a fallen Hero and the Villain who crushes their world.
—If Slushly wasn't so damn stubborn, that is.
He betrayed him, kidnapped his teammate, put him in a gameshow and somehow this guy still holds his beliefs high in the sky. That stupid, annoying, and naive self sacrificing he does for people that would betray him if given the chance pisses him off!
Virtuous, loved, powerful—what else does this guy have that he can't and don't have? He's a walking heroic main character trope !
A hero, a damsel, a Villain, and some cliche storyline he ended up with. Magnum opus be damned this is his worst work yet, if Slushly didn't change even a little bit throughout this show then what was the point of it all?
Yet even with the trouble his hero boy put him through, he's still the main character of this show. So he continued on to the final act, the thing that could save this story.
It's personally his favorite part when writing the script for this part.
“In front of you is a lever” A smirk creeps on his face.
The colour from Slushly's face drains as his eyes flit from the lever, to Aspen and finally to the 4 other contestants. “I can't make this choice—you can't make me do this. ”
“Oh but I can though.”
“Listen, I know this is a hard choice for you. So, how about I give you some space? You can figure that out on your own.” Pootoot digs a hole in the wall and seals it.
He hears every single word he'd said to Aspen, primarily for that crisp audio quality every good show needs. And then kabloeey— the star had made his choice.
“Oh, no way. Oh—dude that's poggers.”
His great and chivalrous hero had finally grown up and made a good choice worthy of a 4 star rating. He hates him a little less now, ‘Good job, Slushly!’ he thinks.
“It's a good show, right?” Pootoot grins wildly—blabbering on about the excitement, fun, tension that comes from the gameshow's end while Slushly stares at him frozen in place.
“Why—Why did you do that?” He doesn't get it, what kind of person does this sort of thing? Did he do something wrong to Pootoot in the past? he can't figure it out.
“—People are made to kill each other, that's their whole thing!” he waves his arms around making some unreadable motions, is he just a sick person? Is he someone he can't "save" like those same 4 people he just killed?
“You're just like the rest of us now!” Pootoot giggles. “Down here, living in our squalor.” What a hero he was, huh? he couldn't even save those innocent people.
Words blur in and out in his mind, a ringing sensation growing with his guilt weighing on his shoulders like an anvil.
“—Nothing really matters, so would you let me do this?”
“By all means, lead the way.”
He won't let Pootoot get the ending he wants, not now and not ever.
“But if I already killed four people—what's two more?”
His Protagonist sure is a stubborn yet interesting person, that's what the viewers love most right? an electrifying chemistry between the antagonist and the protagonist.
It's decided, he'll keep this star for the next season of his show. He's already imagined a plot bigger and better than his latest—he's excited to say the least. But,
If he wants to play that way,
“Hey buddy, remember what I said? what doesn't kill you—”
Then he won't let him have the satisfaction of a proper ending.