Chapter Text
Despite everything, Wifies was proud of Parrot.
His friend had been able to outsmart him and pass the failsafe that was the Paragon. Parrot had been able to trick him and used his own cleverness to find an escape. There was hardly anymore doubt in Wifies that Parrot wouldn’t need him anymore. Parrot would be fine without him now. And even if his friend still needed help? There were others. Others who would help him. Others who weren’t like Wifies (he hated how relieved he felt at that comparison). Parrot didn’t need him.
Because even Wifies himself knew what he was. For as much as Parrot couldn’t see his side, Wifies knew that he himself never tried to see from Parrot’s side. He was a coward. He hid behind worries of safety to justify what he had been doing. He had hurt his friend, and the only thing he got from it was a burning guilt that seemed to consume his insides. Parrot was never going to be happy within the obsidian walls. He was an Avian, after all. Their wings were meant for free skies and fresh air. Still, he’d ignored that. He kept convincing himself with every possible argument, kept trying to tell himself that it was for his friend’s safety.
If it had never come to this, Wifies knew that he would have never changed. So, he was proud. Proud that Parrot was able to make the decision and leave him to die. Proud that Parrot would never have to need him again.
And that was the goal, wasn’t it? The Paragon had not only been a failsafe to protect Parrot— it was a test. Wifies planned to die. So, he wanted to make sure that Parrot would be able to do on his own, or if his friend would stick by the obsidian walls forever. Even if it meant hurting him. The only bonus of that was that Parrot wouldn’t miss him or attempt to figure out why he was missing.
Wifies had only ever wanted to keep his friend safe. But even that spiraled out of control and turned into something darker. Something that had compelled him to strip somebody’s freedom away to alleviate the worried buzz beneath his chest.
He exhaled.
The Creator wasn’t kind, Wifies had seen that directly. His life and being was put on a timer once he had ‘slain’ him. There was only so much more Wifies could do now, even as the Director. And he knew intimately of what happened to clones whose stories ran out. Hence, the planning to die part. He gives out a hysterical chuckle at being reused for parts for other clones. At least the guy liked recycling. That made him feel a little better. He wouldn’t want himself to go to waste either.
Wifies had even taken a few key ideas from the harder escape rooms The Creator had used on him back during testing for the Paragon. A little homage to the nature of his existence (he never got to tell Parrot what he was, did he?). It had been a while since he’d even done any escape rooms. He would get the chance to, in a way. Once his own parts were redistributed into future clones. Even with all the cheats The Creator used, and all the reasons and everything behind it, he still missed the escape rooms. He missed the thrill of a puzzle finished, and the frustration of getting it wrong.
Off-handedly, he wondered what Kenadian and Wato would think. Ken had already spent so much to get Wifies out of The Creator’s reach. He gave him a chance to deviate from his original purpose and be somewhat free from the endless puzzle solving. Would they be sad? Would they miss him? Would they look for his body? If The Creator hadn’t already taken it for spare parts.
But he stopped himself. There was no use in thinking of things he wouldn’t get to witness. That was already beyond his reach and his lifespan. He would miss them too, though. As well as Parrot.
…
He didn’t eye the exit— there was no point in doing so when death had been his goal the entire time. For the first time in a while, he felt nervous. The spyglass sat on the pressure plate, as if mocking him for his decisions. Wifies couldn’t bring himself to regret anything. Still, the inanimate object was going to despawn soon. And Wifies would die.
The nerves died down, and what was left was a warm, growing, calmness of his existence.
He stepped off of his pressure plate to cradle the spyglass one last time.
And Wifies— what came before, not the Director— smiled. He laughed, he cried. And he said goodbye to a world that hardly knew him.
Parrot would be fine.
Somewhere, in the vast void, either above or below the world, a camera shut off. A low hum fills the contemplative silence with more thoughts to process.
When Wifies— the true and first one now— had first engineered the clones, he built them with imperfection in his mind. Attempting to recreate the sheer essence of humanity was a bold move, and he had relentlessly failed time and time again (and he studied that, because that too was a mistake he could learn to replicate in his clones). Every other clone was always too janky, too serious, too calculating, too smart. Too much like him. So, he tried again.
By then, his clones were suddenly too dumb or too forgetful. The audience wouldn’t watch something like that, now. It would’ve been far too annoying to see it through.
The audience needed someone who was smart, but could continue to make mistakes. They needed someone they could relate to, and Wifies found himself slowly straying from that requirement. He reached the top, yes. But what was the point of that if no one could see him from their view below? Cheating, the brainless would call him. But he wasn’t. And that was the problem in its entirety. Somehow along the way, he’d lost his own humanity, retreating into a cold, unfeeling husk. Escape rooms lost their difficulty, and no matter what he did, he just couldn’t seem to find a way to stop being bored. To stop making everything feel so bleak.
That was why needed the clones. To live out everything he couldn’t. To provide his audience with something worth their time.
And… oh. Wifies felt a mere wisp of melancholy (how long had it been since he truly felt?) at seeing this particular story end. It was one of his most tasteful ones yet. A him who was driven by yearning and ultimately driven into the dark by their own hubris. He was almost sad to see this one go. Almost.
Furthermore, this meant that he had finally found a way to replicate humanity. Or at least a good chunk part of what it meant to be human. Letting the clone go with Kenadian had been more of a gamble than a gambit at first. A clone had never been able to deviate their code before or go past than what they were meant to do. Usually shutting down and deactivated upon victory. But that specific run had one unaccounted variable: outside influence. In better words, #1108 was the first clone to have been told by outside forces other than him that they were a clone. And that was devastatingly interesting.
So, he made use of the little cameras in his clones’ eyes and decided to keep #1108’s on the main screen. Like a show that he tuned into without fail and constantly took notes of.
He watched #1108 stumble his way through servers, meeting new friends and new experiences. He watched #1108 work through a war. He watched #1108 increasingly spiral his way into the dark, convinced that he was doing the right thing. He watched #1108 yearn with the will of a person so utterly terrified. He watched #1108 be more human than he himself could ever manage to be.
And now, he watched #1108 die. Smiling emptily against the rubble, barely clutching onto the spyglass with his wires torn and burnt out.
It was… tragic. And it was exactly what he’d been aiming for the entire time.
Without further ado, he hung up his lab coat, tightened the loosening bandana against his forehead, and pushed up his glasses. He had a clone to pick up. It would be rather catastrophic if anybody were to find the body.
Parrot should not have gone back.
Hell, it had been weeks since he’d been freed. Wifies’ body was most likely to be in the middle of decomposing by now. It would be a little disgusting to move it around. Still, he owed it to the Wifies who had once been his best friend to give him a proper burial. Even if it meant going back into the Paragon to retrieve it. It was an impulsive and late decision, sure. At least he made it. A part of him still wanted Wifies to rot alone in the Paragon. In the prison that he had kept Parrot in for far too long. And yeah, so what if keeping grudges against dead people were unhealthy, so what? Wifies deserved it. After everything. For what he did to Parrot, to Jumper, and to literally everyone he had sought to hurt in his goal.
The other part of him still saw Wifies as his best friend. He couldn’t look past all the horrid things Wifies had done, sure. But even then, it was Wifies. The guy might not have cared anymore, but Parrot wasn’t going to stoop to his level.
Embarrassingly, that hadn’t been enough at the time. In fact, the main reason that pushed him to return to the scene was Ken and Wato. Parrot was only slightly ashamed that he had failed to consider Wifies’ closest friends until a few weeks later. He hadn’t called them. What was he supposed to say? What was even there to say to the ones who weren’t there to see Wifies slowly turn into a monster? So, even if the guilt made his chest hurt harder, he put off answering either of their questions until he could give Wifies a proper burial.
The pair hadn’t talked to him for weeks, anyway. It would be fine.
The trek was long and arduous. If it was because Parrot was stalling or if it was actually long, he wasn’t sure. That didn’t really matter. Because now he was face to face again with the towering obsidian wall he was once trapped beyond. He shoved his communicator into his pocket, plainly ignoring the little notifications he was getting from Theo.
He inhaled slowly.
The muffled sound of the explosion still rung in his ears every time he thought of Wifies. He had taken more time than he thought he would to process it, but—
He was here already. He shouldn’t be wasting anymore time. Parrot flew up above the obsidian wall, half-expecting a guard or something to just pop up and try to kill him or trap him in. But there was nothing. He stumbled on his landing. There was nothing at all. Just the low whistling of the wind and an empty cage that was meant for two. Parrot swallowed, keeping his weapons close, before walking out in search of Wifies. His own feathers bristled at the feeling of being watched. There was nobody around— right? All the guards were gone and Wifies was…
Parrot tried not to linger too long, his eyes quickly darting away from the evidences of his past escape attempts. Wooden towers in the sky left broken and unusable. Holes in the ground from where he got his supplies. A few boats here and there. He could even see some hints of burnt grass in the cherry biome when he first burnt Wifies’ house.
The plan is whatever you want it to be. It’s just us in this part of the world anyway.
…
Parrot, please give that to me. Before you hurt yourself.
Parrot never wanted to kill Wifies. But even Wifies knew that an ending with the both of them alive was just not possible. Throughout their time together in the Paragon, Parrot had let himself hope that his best friend would soon snap out of it. And sometimes, he did. During their quieter moments together, Parrot could almost see glimpses of the old Wifies coming back. Small anecdotes, trinkets that he left by Parrot’s house, and the rare moments of laughter that Parrot would rarely pull out of him. But even that only lasted for so long. Once it was gone, it was like attempting to catch smoke.
Maybe in another world. Preferably one far away from this one (who was he kidding?).
Parrot booted up the flying machine.
Wifies might not have cared, but Parrot did. To an extent he shouldn’t have after everything.
The stairs to the chamber were surprisingly mostly intact, and the chamber? Not so much. It looked completely wrecked. Blood (why was it still wet?) was smeared on the rubble. It smelt distinctively of car oil for a reason Parrot couldn’t quite reach. Even stranger was that Wifies wasn’t anywhere. Not a bone, skull, or even a body part was left. Come to think of it, there were faint, but very real footprints on some of the steps of the stairs. Parrot squinted.
Drag marks.
Shit. Somebody had stolen Wifies’ body. Who? And for what?
He searched through the rubble for more clues. After a few minutes he found... the spyglass. It was scratched, chipped from the sides, and blackened spots that suggested it was burnt. A note was attached to the side in hastily written scribbles.
They were coordinates. And a single message: Come alone.