Chapter Text
In hindsight, Alan really should have changed the name of the computer at some point.
Hand-me-downs are an effective way of making the most out of a variety of different things, commonly clothes, cars, tools, and other things somebody might need.
In Alan's case, it was his mother's old PC. The thing wasn't exactly top of the line for the time, the monitor had already been well out of date and, it when he got it from her, it had the some random, occasional stuttering that had taken months to fix. (With quite a bit of help from a programming acquaintance of his...)
And you might have asked him why he didn't just factory reset the whole thing and start from scratch, well, there had been a few digitally backed up family photos and other files his mother still wanted to be sent over to the new phone that her workplace had provided. He backed all the images and files up on a flash drive as well in case the new work phone managed to get as many viruses as this computer had managed to contract in her care...
Then of course, school came back full force and the idea of remembering to change his computer's name was history...
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Alan had no idea what he was doing.
It had started out as a test at first, then became something of a hobby, that he found himself using to unwind from after long and stressful days of not being able to punch his megalomaniacal English teacher in the face with his nonexistent muscles. Or hit her over the head with a chair. Or stab her repeatedly with a knife.
It had just started out as a hobby.
Then it had started talking.
Or, more accurately, writing. A kind of wobbly set of symbols had appeared above it's head the first few times around, wiggly and indecipherable to him, only visible for a brief moment. Then the symbols became a little more clear, a little more straightforward, stayed just a second longer before crumbling.
Then it became words.
What was not, Alan presumed, vulgar profanities, were written to screen. Solid and absolute. And more importantly, comprehensible. Consistent, even.
Alan couldn't even find himself shocked at first. Just confused, to be honest. Programmer021 had said nothing about giving any of the stickmen plugin symbols a chatbot level of functionality...
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The little stickman was currently waving its fist at his cursor through the screen, at him.
"You monster!"
Alan never thought of himself as such. Alan was just a regular teenager, soon to be adult with a little stress to let off. Besides, what would a stickfigure of all things know?
"What is wrong with you?! I've done nothing to you, you wretch!"
Well, it had done the number one sin of existing in his animation program when it should be DEAD. But Alan would rectify that pretty soon.
"You would do this to your own creation? Your own son?"
What the hell was this little bastard talking about?
Alan tossed an axe in its direction, it clipped the stickfigures arm as it ducked out of the way, shearing off pieces of its limb as it screamed inaudibly. Alan drew another axe, changed his mind, redrew it as a halberd, and swiftly severed victim's head from it's nonexistent neck.
Well that was weird. Alan set to drawing out another stickfigure in black and naming it victim again. Maybe he'd get some answers about that.
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Alan never really got any answers. Just more questions. One day, the little black stickfigure named victim managed to outwit him and fly off into the unknown. Where Alan couldn't follow. Where he didn't know. Where he never got any answers.
The only thing he managed to get from victim was a less than excellent goodbye in the form of a cartoonish string of text when it left, reading, "Bye, $![¢#!"
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Alan made another stickfigure less than a week later. So sue him.
They were black, again (so sue him, it was a nice looking shade), not visibly different from victim in any way but their name. The Chosen One. Alan and programmer021 had talked about making more powerful stickmen, more animated, more defined, more.... well. A lot of things really. More roles to fill, more names to live up to.
The Chosen One certainly lived up to their namesake... Running amok on his desktop while the other icons came to life to contain them. Ultimately all of them managed to contain the stickfigure, who was now serving as an adblocker, ball and chain on ankle while Alan finished up another completely arbitrary English essay that he had NO REASON TO BE MAKING-
Alan had to physically tell himself not to scratch gouges into his desk.
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It had been a year since The Chosen One's creation and capture. A whole year. Alan felt like that deserved some sort of celebration. So he went into his drawing program, and started drawing with, as best precision as he could, a large cake. After some deliberation (less than a second), Alan added a single large candle in the middle of the cake, instead of the giant ONE that he couldn't stop thinking about. He opened up the box containing The Chosen One and plopped them down in front of the cake in the drawing program. Maybe he should have made a table and chairs too...
They seemed visibly tense at the change in their environment, looking around wildly before settling their eyes on the cake in front of them. Frozen.
Oh, please. Alan drew up a box of matches. And lit the candle. The Chosen One sat there, unmoving. Unsure.
Ugh. Seriously? What happened to the expressiveness of the first one, really? Didn't have the chatbot feature that the last one did either, but considering all that the last one seemed to say, maybe that was for the better.
Alan switched to text on his keyboard, and hovering his mouse aboard the cake typed out something that would hopefully cue the stickman into what was going on.
happy birthday the chosen one
The Chosen One stared up at the text for a good moment. Alan almost thought their program had frozen, or crashed, before they started shivering in their place on the ground. Was it glitched? Broken? Oh shit, was it going to crash his computer? The stickman kept shivering hard for a moment, before they brought their hands to their face, almost heaving. Oh.
Were they crying? Why were they crying? It was just a birthday cake. Although, didn't a lot of babies cry at their first birthday? Maybe the experience of a birthday was frightening to any kind of one year old, no matter what form.... Alan didn't remember his first birthday, so he had no idea. Thinking of which, did they still have to do one of those Robot Baby care assignments next year? Alan hoped not.
Alan hovered his cursor above The Chosen One's head, unsure of what to do. He switched his hand over to the grab icon and softly landed it on The Chosen One's head. Pat, pat.
The Chosen One pulled their knees up to their chest as best they could and kept crying. Uh, well. Maybe some cake then? Alan grabbed the cake's plate and dragged it closer to The Chosen One, who hadn't yet stopped crying their nonexistent eyes out. Alan wasn't good at this sort of thing... He nudged The Chosen One as gently as he could, typing above the cake.
your cake
The Chosen One twitched in place, still visibly distraught, before grabbing the edges of the plate they could reach, doing that strange pac-man thing with their mouth, and taking a large bit of the cake. Kind of gross, but okay. It wasn't like he was going to eat the cake, afterall.
The Chosen One ate their birthday cake as Alan watched on, he, more than a little confused at this turn of events, but honestly more grossed out when The Chosen One started stuffing it into their face with their hands... He didn't really trust them with a fork or knife though, and wasn't keen on watching his icons being stabbed with them either...
The candle, not extinguished, had dripped wax all over the cake, and Alan had to pluck it out of the cake before The Chosen One shoved that in their mouth as well.
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It wasn't the only birthday that Alan had for The Chosen One. But soon, they too came to an end, when The Dark Lord and The Chosen One managed to torch his desktop and everything along with it.
Well. There went all his files that hadn't been backed up. Alan thunked his head onto the desk.
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It had been... a while since he and dark had escaped the PC. He had long since ridden down his high of their escape but Dark was... still coasting it. It almost felt like any event of destruction or... mass death... only made his "brother" more eager for the next one. They'd hadn't done anything too recently though, not in the last couple of months now. Chosen wasn't so sure anymore. He was tired.
Maybe he'd turn in for bed a little earlier today... Sleep helped headaches most of the time right?
Maybe some day it would help him.
He walked upstairs towards his room. There was a thunk upstairs. When he didn't hear any undignified screeching from upstairs he went to take a look, pushing the door slightly open to see if his brother had dropped something on himself or worse...
No. Dark was fine, hard at work at something Chosen... didn't really have any knowledge about. This sort of stuff was Dark things, not his.
He headed downstairs to bed.
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He awoke with a fail taste in his mouth, drool on his sheets and sweat all over.
He lurched out of bed, feet touching the stained floor and stumbled to the kitchen. The cabinet hinge broke as he got his glass from the cupboard, he couldn't bring it in himself to care. The Chosen One filled his glass with water from the tap and drank. The water tasted... fine. It tasted fine.
The door creaked open, a light filling the space. The Dark Lord entered the kitchen, yawning. Still wearing the same shirt from yesterday, he noticed. The Chosen One put his glass down on the counter as best he could without breaking it this time. Dark blinked at him, Chosen tried not to look away.
"You're up late." Judging by the light blinking over the horizon, Chosen was pretty sure it was the opposite actually.
"Mh. Early."
Dark glanced out of the window, eyes visibly widening when he saw the rays of the morning sun. "Shit. I'm gonna have a massive headache tomorrow aren't I?"
Chosen didn't say anything and tried to swallow the spit in his mouth.
"You okay?"
Chosen nodded his head without glancing up from the worn countertops.
"Yeah. Just a nightmare."
"Ah. Not a bad one this time, I hope?"
Chosen couldn't bring himself to speak. It wasn't as bad as some of the other one's but this one had left a... foul taste in his mouth. Even without having puked on his mattress this time.
"Oh. Was it..."
'Mom' went unspoken.
"Get yourself a pizza or something later then? Treat yourself a little bit, man, you've earned it."
Chosen didn't know what he could say to that. He didn't feel like robbing another small joint just to eat again. Tree bark was fine enough by his standards. But Dark always said that he ate garbage so, just maybe he should try something else this time.
"Well. Good night, then. Or Good morning I guess."
"G'night."
Chosen didn't go back to bed.
He was never able to find anything in the outernet that tasted like those Birthday cakes.
He missed the flavour sometimes.
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Alan's mother called him down for breakfast.