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“Is Nine ever going to come back?” Baron asks the thing sitting beside him in the hot air balloon.
It doesn’t answer. It hasn’t been answering him at all, because it seemingly can’t speak. That’s fine, though, because he’s not looking for an answer. He’s... bored, he guesses.
It’s been roughly a day since he activated the first stabiliser and ran. He doesn’t really know what he did, or if it was good or bad or... anything about the whole affair, really, just that he was told to do something and so he did it.
He feels bad about X. That’s the real sticking point; Nine has him going soft, given he’s never really felt more than passing pity for the various entities inhabiting corrupted and desecrated worlds. Then again, this is different than every time that came before it— the time he was in the skin of a serial killer was far less scary than whatever it is he’s going through now.
It’s an almost novel kind of terror. It’s borderline enjoyable. He’s seen his fair share of terrifying, horrific things; it’s not his fault if, along the way, his mind grows numb to the fear of it.
Though, this time was really different. He rubs the back of his neck as he sits on his bed. There’s no clear explanation for anything this time. Nine seems to have something in mind for the two of them, but he really doesn’t know what. It said it wants to ‘change things’— but what can he change, if he’s just one man in a world full of things that want to kill him?
He lays flat on his back. “It’s not going to, is it?”
There’s no reply.
“It’s been a whole day.” He brings his hand up to his face, and peers at the balloon’s burner system through his fingers. “It’s never been gone a whole day. Almost two, actually.”
He’s being a pessimist, of course, but he can’t really help himself. After all, everything has always wanted him dead before. In his experience, things either watch from afar, or hunt you down and kill you. There’s no two ways about it: if it interacts with you, it wants you dead.
He eyes the strangely humanoid thing standing aimlessly next to his bed.
This time is different, though, he thinks. Which is... Well, it’s interesting?
“Should I be sad?” he asks. He might be sad. He thinks he’s sad. Maybe he got used to the luxury of companionship. God, ‘companionship’? Can he call it a companion? “Since it’s not coming back, I guess.”
It said it’d be back, though. Has it ever outright lied to him before? It’s omitted things and side-stepped the truth, but it’s never actually lied to his face. Maybe that means something.
Or maybe it’s only just started lying to him in earnest.
He wonders again why he trusts it. Does he trust Nine because it gives him things? He’s done so much for it and gotten— what, a diamond and some cake in return? Is that worth something? Is that really worth anything at all, in the end?
He crosses his legs. He’s never really felt this philosophical before. Not that that’s really a bad thing, it’s just new. A lot of things about this world are new. He hasn’t had to run this much in ages; usually he just towers into the sky and peeks over the edge at the false platform beneath him, trying to see if anything is following him upwards.
In a way, this is familiar. He’s used to being alone in the sky. He glances at his ‘buddy’ again. Well, he’s not really ‘alone’ here.
“Are you alive?’ he asks it. “Did Nine make you, or something?” He has the urge to prod it with a finger just to see how it’d react. If it did react, anyway.
It’s slumped over the side of the balloon, head looking down to the ground. It sways back and forth almost playfully.
“I kind of thought you were going to kill me when you first showed up,” he admits. “Nine... totally made this place, didn’t it? Since it told me to come here, anyway. It said it was safe here.”
Its head flops to the side dumbly. He looks back up at the balloon's bloated innards and stares at the flame.
“I miss Nine,” he admits. “For a moment when you gave me that diamond I thought you were Nine.”
He runs a hand through his hair, still laying supine in bed.
“It kind of felt like being, uh... cheated out of something, I guess?” He shrugs. “Not to hurt your feelings, dude, but I kind of— it was like getting cucked.” He laughs at his own joke as always. Something prickles in the back of his head, like a sharp spike of white noise, but he pays it no mind. “I guess you don’t have feelings, though.”
Does Nine have feelings? It has to, right? It almost seemed to be arrogant at first, but now he gets the feeling it’s frightened. That’s assuming it feels fear, though. Is it cruel to hope it does?
He pushes himself into a sitting position and peeks at the dummy. “Do you ever get scared?”
It’s half-dangling over the edge. He makes a face and lays back down. “I mean, Nine has to get scared. Right?”
Baron hopes Nine does feel fear, if only so he can understand it better. If he’s being honest, he probably runs on the stuff himself— if he didn’t have fear, what else would he have? There’s something thrilling about it anyway; and after enough fear, you get numb enough to the danger that it’s almost exciting.
He’s not numb to this kind of danger, though. He almost wants to seek out something familiar; the feeling of being hunted in strange, foggy landscapes and warped hallways with strange creaking floors, or cramming himself into a box and convincing himself the blocks around him aren’t breaking and he’s safe in the dark.
He remembers the cobblestone box he had to seal himself into mere days ago, and his stomach churns. Okay, he doesn’t miss that.
“Everything gets scared,” he reasons aloud to himself. “Like, we’re all always doing stuff because we’re scared.”
People eat and sleep and walk and do... anything because they’re scared. Everyone is always scared to die, right? That’s why they do anything. That’s why people mine and build and spend hours toying with redstone and kill and lie and deceive, and...
...Can Nine even die? He shakes his head and throws the thought out of it. He doesn’t want Nine to die. Actually, he doesn’t care if it’s even possible; if it can die, he doesn’t really want to know about it. He doesn’t want to consider the possibility of being alone in a world of nothing but enemies again. Sure, the entities here are talkative, but they’re still...
I could have been friends with X, he thinks distantly. He rolls onto his side numbly and presses his face into the pillow. But I kind of fucked that up.
The darkness behind his closed eyelids reminds him of the blackstone maze he barely escaped with his life. In the end, he dreams about redstone torches in front of him like a pair of eyes and something pouring water in streams down his bare back as he squirms, unable to move and save himself.
He wakes up cold, and without Nine. His breathing is too quick and his back is still wet; not with water but with sweat. His stomach feels like it’s swirling around in his abdomen, almost as if he’s entering the Nether.
God, he hasn’t even been to the Nether yet, and it’s already this bad?
At least there’s no Circuit here. He scratches his cheek and gets out of bed for the first time in a day. Leaning over the edge to look into the sky, it’s seemingly about noon— of course, he only gets a few moments to check before it abruptly begins to rain. He pulls his face back and wipes the water off, and then glances at his buddy. “Are you good? You’re not going to break if you get wet, right?”
It doesn’t move. Well, that’s not abnormal, so it’s probably doing fine. Still, he gingerly but firmly takes it by the ‘arm’ and pulls it further into the relative dryness of the balloon just in case.
“I can’t believe I just fell asleep like that,” he mumbles, stretching. Static scrapes the back of his brain again. “Like, what if I was in Wonderland, and I just— woke up in one of the dimensions?” He laughs to himself, and glances at the dummy, who is bobbing its head as if in agreement. “Dude, I- I’m— I’m stupid as fuck.”
The rain patters rhythmically on the balloon’s... balloon. He doesn’t think it’s a real hot air balloon, and the colour scheme is weird, but it’s a safe haven and that’s all he cares about. He sits with his feet dangling over the edge and watches the rain fall to the ground far, far below him, until the sun sets over the horizon at his back and the stars emerge behind the clouds. The moon paints the ground with light with long, heavy-handed strokes.
He swings his feet gently, watching the earth beneath him move. It’s nice to be able to sleep normally, he thinks. And look at the sky without those huge brick cubes. Cube... outlines? Whatever they are. As scary as this place is, at least he’s not stuck micro-managing his life like usual. He really doesn’t miss whatever the hell ‘hunting time’ was supposed to be. He pulls a stick and a shard of flint out of his inventory and begins absentmindedly whittling the stick down to the core.
All in all, this place is pretty nice, he thinks. It’s nice enough that maybe he would... if he could, maybe he’d...
As the idea of staying here flits through his mind, he frowns and gets to his feet. No, he’s going crazy. He’s got to sleep. It’s late anyway, ignoring the fact he’s been awake for only a little.
As he falls asleep tonight, he dreams of that cobblestone box. There is something chasing him down and all he can do is stand with his back pressed against a wall in the dark like it can save him. He can hear it getting closer. At first it was breaking blocks mind-numbingly quickly; but now it’s so slow that he’s going several minutes without a sound other than his fearful panting.
All he knows is that it’s getting closer.
It breaks block after block. Eventually, it reaches him, breaking the block directly in front of his eyes no matter which direction he looks in.
When it breaks, he sits up in bed with a scream, and then puts his face in his hands.
Are you serious? At this point I’d actually rather end up in Wonderland.
He sighs. Well, if he wanted proof he was going stir-crazy, that was definitely it.
As he descends from the hot air balloon, he wonders what Nine will think if it comes back and he isn’t there. Some nasty part of him hopes it thinks he’s dead, but the rest of him feels bad for thinking that, so he pretends it didn’t happen. Nobody has to know, anyway.
He glances at the brick structure in the middle of the river. Maybe there’s something there, he thinks.
Casting one last glance at the hot air balloon, he hopes for the first time that Nine doesn’t come back, if only to spare it from the hypothetical fear of his death.