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“DANG IT, MAN!” Skizz yelled, fingers brushing against the four point platform for the third time that game. As much as he loved Ghastketball, and was obsessed with the game, it was capable of sending him into a rage like no other.
It was a lost cause game and he knew it. Probably not even worth trying to get any more points. He would be better off just waiting for the game’s timer to run out and start a new game. But, Skizz being Skizz, he was also in it for the fun as much as he was for the competition. He would love to get that stupid high score, but something about jumping around on the deceptively sturdy animals was thrillingly fun.
So Skizz hopped along the floor, racing his way back to his side of the court.
A buzzer sounded and Cub’s “It’s halftime, drink those potions!” blasted on the speaker system, letting him know that he wouldn’t have to wait too long for a reset.
Skizz reached his side of the court, stepping into the bubble column and letting it take him up to the platform above. Some more points wouldn’t hurt, but certainly wouldn’t get him the high score at this point.
He took his time with the slow falling potion, not in any hurry anymore with such a lost cause game. It had an interesting taste, almost like a cream of mushroom soup with the occasional hint of some sort of meaty taste. Once the thick, white liquid was down his throat it left an odd berry-like aftertaste, and of course made him feel twice as light as usual.
Skizz held a snowball out, immediately attracting a few of the ghasts’ attention. They of course, being the stupid creatures they were, flew just a bit too high, or slightly out of reach for him, smiling softly in their bliss.
Skizz hid the snowball behind his back for a few seconds with an exasperated groan. “Come on, man! WORK WITH ME!”
The ghasts lost interest after a second, floating off lazily until Skizz pulled out the oh-so delicious snowball again.
This time, one of them was in a great spot and Skizz jumped left to land softly on its head. Still holding the snowball, he searched for another ghast to jump onto, feeling the time ticking away, but not the pressure that usually came with it. He had to hide the snowball a couple times to get the ghasts to stop swarming him, but eventually he got one in a good enough spot.
A mischievous giggle interrupted his plan of jumping to the next ghast, and above him swooped in one Tango Top, arrow knocked in his bow and ready to shoot. Travelling at the speed he was, Skizz didn’t have time to dodge, and he yelled out “HEY!” as he felt a flaming arrow lodge itself in his arm, instantly spreading the fire to his vest and burning his arm up.
He smeared the snowball over the arrow, extinguishing it just in time to watch Tango speed off with a maniacal cackle. He rolled his eyes with a chuckle and tried to jump to another ghast.
Only to find that his head wouldn’t stay turned and his legs were stuck running forward, then resetting to where they’d been a split second before.
“What the?” he tried to say, the words coming out faltering and glitched. He tried to look down at his legs, only for his head to be snapped back upwards immediately, stuck looking mostly at the wall to his left. His feet felt as if they were floating in the air and clipping into the ghast simultaneously, sending his brain so many panic signals that it was hard to ignore.
Server glitches weren’t uncommon, so Skizz calmed down after a few seconds. With the best of his abilities, he spoke a verbal command to his comm, asking to exit the server. After only a couple tries it worked, and he was digitally compressed to his code, and sent to the main hub within a second.
His feet still felt weird upon landing, but given the fact he could walk around like normal, Skizz didn’t think much of it and pressed the button to rejoin the Hermitcraft server.
With another whoosh of code he found himself back at Ghastketball… still stuck on the ghast and unable to move aside from the loop of running and resetting.
“Uh oh,” Skizz said, only one of the syllables actually ending up partially audible, and he heard Cub’s “End of the third quarter!” from the speakers behind him.
***
“What’s his stupid face doing now?” Tango asked nobody in particular, watching as Skizz exited and rejoined the game over and over. The pinging on his comm was somewhat annoying, and he had half the mind to ignore it and continue with his business in peace. At the same time, he was curious, and always up for a distraction. (That was a lie, but he felt like it now, so shut up!)
He took off, popping a rocket and blasting into the air, before making a sharp turn towards the gaming district. If what Skizz was doing wasn’t interesting enough, he could at least just shoot another arrow at him and make him mad.
The giant box that was Ghastketball came into view after not much flying, and Tango grew only more confused as the pings continued sporadically.
“What are you doing?” He laughed, swooping into the box through the holes in the ceiling. Tango caught only a glimpse of Skizz before he logged out again, and he landed on the ghast Skizz had just been on, waiting for him to rejoin.
When his friend did eventually come back, he immediately realized what was happening. Skizz was caught in some kind of a glitch, where he was just repeatedly walking off the edge of the ghast and being pulled back to the starting point. It looked ridiculous, admittedly, and he couldn’t help but laugh as he watched.
He stood up, waving his hand in front of Skizz’s blank face, chuckling slightly. When he tried to touch or stop him his own hands were nudged out of the way by the jittery, glitched movement.
“—ngo— e, ma—!”
“Ehehe! You’re all skadoodled up, my friend!”
He gave Skizz a playful punch in the arm, hoping it might help, but aside from moving him over momentarily, he just went back into the same position as before.
“Uhhhh, yeah I don’t know how to help you here,” he told Skizz, looking his friend up and down for any indication.
Skizz said nothing.
Tango glanced down at the tab list on his comm, showing only three people. “Joel’s the only one on, do you think he might be able to help?”
Skizz’s head jerked a little in his direction for a moment, just enough to be noticeable.
“Alright, I’ll call him over.”
<Tango> hey Joel
<Smallishbeans> sup man
<Tango> Skizz is all skadoodleificated, wanna come help?
<Smallishbeans> sure give me a sec
“He’s coming,” Tango informed him.
Skizz once again gave no reaction, and Tango decided to make himself comfortable on top of the ghast. The creatures weren’t that bad. Cute, but just a little bit dumb for his liking.
“You know, it’s hard to have a conversation if you don’t answer me,” Tango teased, moving his arm to nudge Skizz a little bit. His humored smile faltered, however, when his elbow passed through Skizz’s leg entirely, hitting the soft head of the ghast instead.
“What the—”
Tango stood up, trying to push Skizz’s arm. Sure enough, he felt nothing but air.
“Skizz?”
“Not quite, but close enough,” Joel called out from above, gliding down to land on the ghast beside him. “What’s up with Skizz?”
Tango slowly put his hand up to Skizz’s expressionless face, shuddering a little when he was able to push through what looked like solid skin. “I dunno, I just came over and found him all skadoodled! And now I keep phasing through him like he’s a ghost or something.”
“Huh,” Joel muttered, running his hand through Skizz’s shoulder experimentally. “Weird.”
“I know right?”
The two hermits stood there awkwardly for a minute, not really sure of what to do.
“Um, you could maybe try to kick him off the server with his comm? Some sort of override thing or something.”
Tango shrugged. “Sure?”
He reached for Skizz’s comm, feeling the durable metal for a moment before his fingers phased through it.
“Um. Guess not,” Joel said, scratching his neck. “Xisuma?”
Tango chuckled humorlessly. “Yeah, sounds good.”
***
Xisuma groaned, glancing over the short message from Tango again as he logged onto the server. He’d been in the middle of making a showcase for the next big update on a private world, and he really didn’t feel like having to fix server issues at the moment. What he really wanted was to go to bed, but running a server came with its downsides.
He made his way to the nether upon logging in, taking a second to admire the progress Bdubs had made on the beautiful nether hub. The gaming district portal wasn’t far from his own, thankfully, making the trip significantly less painful.
With a hiss and a cloud of purple particles, he emerged at the gaming district, taking off immediately for ghastketball. Faint chatter became the worried voices of Tango and Joel as he landed on top of the building.
“He must have been using his voice to leave the server when the glitch started, right?” Joel asked.
“Yeah, before he went all ghosty on us!”
Xisuma dropped down onto the ghast, landing behind the glitched hermit.
“Hey X,” Joel said.
“Hello,” Xisuma responded distractedly, looking Skizz over. “So he’s just caught on the edge of the ghast, then?”
Tango shrugged, face of bewilderment. “Yeah, initially, but then his collision turned off somehow.”
Xisuma frowned, hesitantly running his arm through Skizz’s. “Do you know what started the glitch, or was it just random?”
“I don’t think the server was glitching or lagging, so I dunno,” Joel informed him.
“I did shoot a flaming arrow at him a while ago, that might’ve triggered it.”
“Where?”
Tango gestured to Skizz’s left arm, where a shallow, mostly healed over arrow hole was present among his many other scars.
“That definitely could have triggered something,” Xisuma muttered, inspecting the wound as much as he could given Skizz’s lack of collision at the moment.
Tango’s shoulders slumped a bit at the words, which Xisuma had to ignore for the moment, putting his full focus on the issue with Skizz.
“I might have to…” Xisuma grimaced. “I might have to manually reset his code.
“Uhh, what?” Joel asked.
Tango shuddered. “He basically just hacks into your brain and messes with your bits until it’s fixed.”
“And that’s bad?”
Xisuma sighed. “Yeah, it’s not very comfortable to do when you’re actively using the code, for me or the player. And if I mess something up…”
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence between the three as they contemplated what could hypothetically go wrong.
“Well, I haven’t messed up yet, so… no point… delaying.”
“Should we leave?” Joel asked.
Xisuma hesitated. “No, Skizz will probably appreciate the company.”
Tango sat down next to Skizz, making enough room for Xisuma to get to work, Joel hopping to another ghast across from them.
Xisuma let out a breath, bracing himself for the experience as he opened the code database from a screen on his armor. He usually did tweaks to the hermit’s code when they weren’t active on the server, as the risks were far fewer that way. Not to mention the fact that he wouldn’t be blared with alarms and signals to get out of the code at every second like he would now.
A green holographic screen projected from his armor plate, displaying a list of all of the hermits. Skizz, Tango, Joel and himself all had a red warning dot next to their names. With another sigh, he pressed Skizz’s icon, immediately feeling an uncomfortable buzzing throughout his entire suit of armor. He knew there was probably a way to disable the warning system, which would make the experience more pleasant for himself, but Xisuma wasn’t willing to potentially sacrifice the wellbeing of his hermits for his own comfort. The warning was there for a reason.
Green text exploded around him, and Xisuma slowly raised his arm to sift through the millions of lines, wincing slightly as the buzzing started to feel like pins and needles on his skin, prompting him to either proceed with extreme caution, or get out of Skizz’s code.
He didn’t want to mess with health stats or anything of the sort, as that had the potential to go south quickly. He overrode Skizz’s coordinates first, sending him just a block backwards on the ghast.
The instant position change caught Tango by surprise, making him jump a little.
“Sorry,” Xisuma said, voice slightly strained. He paused, arms still held out towards the code, watching Skizz carefully. Apart from a faint flash of a pained expression, nothing seemed to have changed with the glitch.
Moving as though he was suspended in syrup, Xisuma moved to a different line of code. “You said that he tried leaving the server?”
“Yeah,” Tango said, watching Xisuma worriedly.
The admin nodded slightly, changing a lot of values in Skizz’s code, and ensuring others were on their correct settings. Collision was now set to true, silenced was set to false, everything that he could do for the time being.
Joel coughed awkwardly. “So…”
Xisuma slowly moved his hand up to the innocent looking x symbol in the top of the hologram, pressing it with a sigh of relief. The green shrunk back into the little box labeled Skizzleman.
“Um, did it work?” Joel asked, seemingly a stupid question given that Skizz’s position hadn’t changed.
“Yeah, as well as I expected,” Xisuma sighed, closing the hologram entirely. “I think all we need to do now is a quick server reset to refresh the world data and pry Skizz free from the glitch he’s caught in.”
“Like, now?” Joel asked.
Tango stood up. “Yeah! The sooner we can un-glitch his bits the better!”
Joel shrugged, standing up as well.
Xisuma hit the server refresh button on his comm, and once again upon receiving a confirmation message.
They all compressed down to their code as the server closed, booting them all out to their main hubs.
***
Tango rejoined the server in the exact same spot on that stupid ghast, feet sinking ever so slightly into the soft creature. Joel joined a second after him, facing him from an adjacent ghast, followed almost immediately by Xisuma.
And then Skizz joined, immediately plummeting off the edge of the ghast and falling to his death.
“SKIZZ!” Tango screamed, running to the edge of the ghast and peering down to watch his friend splatter on the court floor.
Skizzleman fell from a high place.
Tango turned and flew off to the ghastketball bed above him, where he knew Skizz would be respawning in a second, and sure enough, the hermit appeared next to the red bed the second he touched town beside it.
“I—”
Cut off, Tango watched in horror as Skizz doubled over, vanishing in a puff of smoke in front of him. He reappeared in the same spot a second later, only to meet the same fate three more times, Tango unable to do anything in time to help him.
Skizzleman starved to death.
Skizzleman starved to death.
Skizzleman starved to death.
Skizzleman starved to death.
The small death loop finally ended as Skizz, exhausted, fell back onto the bed, head hitting the pillow softly. Tango and the others ran up to him, hovering over him as they watched him gasp softly for breath, horrified eyes staring straight up at the ceiling above him.
“Skizz?” Tango asked him, voice breaking a bit in his uncertainty.
Relief set in his heart as the pair of brilliant blue eyes met his own, his expression softening a bit as Skizz calmed down.
“Hey buddy,” Skizz said, voice a little shaky. “What a ride, huh?”
Tango stammered for a second, not quite expecting the reaction.
Xisuma stepped forward, inspecting Skizz for any obvious signs of harm, of which there were none, from what Tango could see. “Are you feeling alright, Skizz?” the admin asked.
Skizz chuckled a little. “Yeah, I’m alright. Could’ve been a little nicer while pokin’ around in my code there, buddeh, but thanks for helpin’ me out!”
He pulled himself up into a sitting position, and Tango instinctively pushed him down to stop him from standing. “Wha— WHAAAAAT?!?!! Are you joking?! Sit your FACE down!”
Skizz gave him a humored look and a confused laugh. “What?” he asked through laughs.
Tango spluttered. “WHAT DO YOU MEAN WHAT?!!?! EAT, JERK FACE!”
Skizz opened his mouth to answer but was met with a pork chop shoved into his mouth instead. He pushed it away with another confused laugh. “I’m not hungry, Top!”
“You just starved a million times, so yes, you are!” Tango doubled down, shoving the meat into Skizz’s face again.
“Don’t push it, Tango,” Xisuma said from behind them, a screen with Skizz’s stats displayed in front of him. His hunger was half gone, even after the respawn, from what the data said, and Skizz’s health was also lower than optimal. “From what the code says, the glitch was more than just visual, and actually had an impact on Skizz’s stats, so he probably feels like he’s just ran a marathon with no food, or drinks, or rest.”
“Jeez,” Joel muttered, leaning over on the wall next to him.
“Yeah I’m pretty tired, I guess,” Skizz said with a shrug.
“But you’re not hurt or hungry?” Tango asked, bewildered.
Skizz grinned. “Well, maybe a bit.”
“SKIIIIZZ!!” Tango yelled, shoving the pork chop in his face again. Skizz accepted it with an eyeroll and began nibbling at it slowly.
“Oh my gosh,” Tango deadpanned. “I think his code’s still messed up.”
“Hey! No it’s nOT!” Skizz said, tearing off a bigger piece of the meat in protest.
Tango smiled despite his worry and, quite frankly, his guilty conscience, as Skizz exaggerated his eating to amuse him.
Xisuma closed the stat screen looking satisfied. “Well, Skizz, if you’re feeling alright then I think you should be good to go, man.”
“Well, good for me,” Skizz said, accepting another pork chop from Tagno, although they both knew it was a bit unnecessary.
“I’d suggest taking it easy for a bit, but your stats are looking pretty good, especially with the food helping you out.”
“Pork chop power!” Tango announced proudly.
Joel smirked. “Well, I prefer horses, but you know.”
Tango did a double take. “What?”
“What?” Joel repeated, feigning obliviousness.
Xisuma checked his comm. “Well anyways, I’ve gotta get to bed, you three have a good afternoon, or evening.”
“Thanks X!” Skizz called out as the admin flew off.
Joel stretched. “I’d better be off too. Can’t have Lizzie waiting too long.”
Tango and Skizz both bid him farewell and watched as he too took off into the sky.
Skizz licked some pork chop residue off of his fingers. “So what’re you up to, Top?”
“I’m making sure you don’t go all skadoodly again!”
He waved Tango off with a smile. “I’m alright, you can get back to business.”
“No, seriously Skizz, I’m so sorry,” Tango told him, his expression guilt-ridden.
“That’s ok, you couldn’t have known it would happen. I should be thanking you! Pfft!”
“But my arrow caused it, didn’t it?!”
Skizz paused. “Uhh, maybe. It was probably just random though, Top. Really.”
“So you’re not mad?”
“No! Never!”
He pouted. “You’re sure?”
“YES!” Skizz laughed, pulling him into a hug. “You’re my homie buddeh, and besides! This just means I get to have some pranky revenge, ooh hoo hoo!”
Tango grumbled a bit, but let a smile touch his face as Skizz hugged tighter.