Chapter Text
Through the Portal lies a prison, millions of blocks out in the Nether. It’s bigger than any prison Spoke has ever seen, and knows then that there’s no doubt that it’s holding all of the missing players. It’s holding Mapicc.
He doesn’t have it in him to say anything, just wordlessly following Jamato. What is there left to say? Jamato played him perfectly, anticipating absolutely everything Spoke could have done and one-upping him at every turn. Mapicc hates him now, and nothing Spoke can say or do would be able to change his mind.
He’s sure that Jamato only offered to let Spoke see Mapicc because he knows there’s nothing Spoke can do that would mend their relationship. Jamato has left no room for Spoke to get out of this fate. Even should Spoke be able to meet Mapicc face to face, he already knows that his Mapicc is practically gone.
Spoke has already tried, in vain, to get Mapicc to see things his way. What more could he even say? Even if Mapicc knew the extensive history between Spoke and Jamato, it would change nothing. Jamato dug his clutches too deep into Mapicc. In reality, it was over from the moment Jamato saved Mapicc from Leo.
Two years really meant nothing, in the end. One instant, one totem popping, is all it took for everything to fall apart. Does Mapicc even know the lengths Spoke was willing to go just to find him back then? He almost brought the server to ruin for Mapicc. Would he even care if Spoke told him, or would he just see it as another attempt of manipulation?
What can Spoke say to make Mapicc come back? He’ll say anything, he’ll do anything, he’ll-
“We’re here,” Jamato interrupts his thought process, standing on a pressure plate to open a cell.
Spoke examines his surroundings. The cell is down a long hallway, far isolated from anything and anyone else. He knows it, then: This cell was built just for him. Jamato planned for this from the very start.
“If you ever want me to consider letting you see Mapicc again, you’ll step inside now,” Jamato says icily, irritated at Spoke’s lack of movement.
Spoke laughs humorlessly, motionless outside of it. It’s all he could do. He has no words.
‘He had no intention of letting me see Mapicc from the start, did he? He was always going to leave me to rot here, slowly being forgotten by everyone. Maybe the idea of seeing Mapicc was just a false mercy to get me to comply. I don’t even care anymore. Maybe it would be better if I just died.’
And yet, he falls for it anyway, stepping inside the cell that may as well just be his tomb.
Jamato steps off the pressure plate and laughs.
“Finally, after two years, you’re finally exactly where you deserve to be,” he marvels, “And I’m the one who got to do it. Everything is finally worth it. The server can start to become a better place as they slowly forget who you are.”
Spoke’s eyes lower to the ground. He doesn’t have any more remarks left towards his jailor. Everything is meaningless without Mapicc by his side.
“Don’t worry, Spoke,” Jamato smiles, “Because even after everyone else forgets you, I will never forget this moment. You’ll always have me to remember you, SpokeIsHere, the worst person to ever grace the server.”
‘How can I be the worst, Jamato, when you’re standing right there? Just look at yourself, hypocrite.’
He wishes he had the energy to say something back rather than just thinking it. He knows Jamato is relishing in his defeat, and yet he can’t do anything more than let him. He hates it, he hates that the persistent freak before him gets to feel any kind of joy. He should have just died at the lighthouse. That would have made the server a better place.
He can hear Jamato talking, but can’t make out the words. He’s so tired. His eyes shut, and he’s unsure if Jamato is still talking or not, but he can only have a sliver of hope that the other man has had enough of him for a little while, if just to let him sleep.
He doesn’t even have a bed. It’s pointless in the Nether. He’d blow up if he even tried to enter one. He supposes that that’s also a part of Jamato’s design, that the criminals he kidnapped don’t even get the right to a sound rest.
But at least he had the dignity to leave Spoke alone, for however long he just slept for. He opens his eyes feeling just slightly less exhausted, Jamato’s presence being replaced by a silent Null member.
Guard rotations. Spoke had to work around that, once, when he freed Wemmbu from the LAW prison. He knows that there’s no one left on the server that would do the same for him. He wonders how long it will take for everyone to forget about him, when Jamato will finally get bored and just kill him.
One part of him hopes it’s sooner than later. He’d rather be dead than to live rotting in this cell, life in Jamato’s hands at every given moment.
The other part of him hopes the opposite. If everyone forgets about him, that would have to include Mapicc. Mapicc already hates him, and he can hardly even handle that. He knows that forgetting would be far worse. Because even if Mapicc hates Spoke, at least he still thinks about him. At least hatred is not nothing.
The days pass as such: Spoke spends most of his time either thinking, mumbling to himself, or sleeping. He has never once been let out of his cell, and his only source of interaction is when the Null guards silently hand him some food once a day, staring at him until he eats it. Never enough to be completely full, but just enough so that he won’t starve to death. The guards don’t ever try to respond when he talks to them. He stopped asking about Mapicc on day five, or so. He stopped talking to the guards at all after the first week.
Being dead would be better than living like this. It’s a shame that Jamato accounted for that thought process, ordering his guards not to leave until they watch Spoke leave. There’s no way to take damage in here.
This truly is his own personal Hell. Each day a cycle of stagnant nothingness.
He wonders how Mapicc is doing, if they subjected him to this same type of treatment. He supposes that Mapicc could deal with it far better than Spoke himself can.
The sound of a door opening shakes him from his thoughts. On the pressure plate stands a Null guard, stepped aside to give room for Spoke to make his way through.
He doesn’t move. He supposes this is just another one of Jamato’s tricks, and he won’t fall for it this time. No matter how badly he wants freedom, he can’t-
“Are you coming, or what? We’re on limited time here,” The Null guard drawls, a voice changer coating the words.
“Coming where?” Spoke responds, voice heavy, “If Jamato wants to see me, he can just come here. I don’t have the energy to go wherever he wants me to go. If he doesn’t like it, he can just kill me.”
The guard scoffs, dropping Spoke a stack of Golden Carrots, “I am not working with Jamato. If you want any chance at freedom, any chance to see your ‘best friend’ again, you will follow me out of here.”
Spoke takes a step forward, warily, “How do I know I can trust you? That this isn’t another trick from Jamato?”
They laugh, “What would you know about trust? You’re right, though. You can’t trust me, but nothing in the world is worse than the situation you are in right now. If I were you, I’d be taking any potential chance at freedom I could get. Jamato killing you for this would be a mercy, and you know it.”
Spoke really hates this ‘guard’s’ personality, but he hasn’t had this sense of brutal honesty in a long time. Truthfully, they’re right. He has nothing to lose by following them.
He steps out of the door.
“I’m glad to see that what’s left of your sense of reason is still intact,” they comment, and the way they talk like they know anything about Spoke is really pissing him off.
“What would you know?” he grits, casting his eyes aside.
“Take this,” they respond, tactfully avoiding his question and handing him a shulker box and netherite pickaxe.
Spoke places the box and opens it. It’s full of invisibility potions. He takes a few out and mines the shulker box, pocketing it in his inventory. What could a Null member, traitor or not, possibly need with so much invisibility?
“Splash yourself in the corner so you don’t get it on me,” they continue, “And then you’ll follow me out of here. We’ll have just enough time for one full potion effect to leave this place, provided you keep up. I hope all the time you spent rotting in here didn’t make your legs weak.”
They’re totally, seriously an asshole. Spoke would really be surprised if they don’t have any relations to Jamato, considering they share the same ability in completely getting on his nerves. But unfortunately for him, he’s in no position to do anything but listen, if he wants even the slightest chance to see Mapicc again.
He really hates this, but he hates this much less than the ‘life’ Jamato’s forced him into since he got here. Spoke walks into the corner and splashes himself, eating the Golden Carrots until he’s full on hunger, a feeling he hasn’t had since before Null started hunting him.
“Good,” the ‘guard’ nods, turning his back to Spoke, “now follow me, and keep quiet. It’s up to you to ensure you don’t lag behind.”
Spoke’s legs are weak, and every step feels akin to agony, but he doesn’t dare stop. He can’t afford to anymore, and he’s been through far worse pain on many other occasions. He won’t throw away this chance from being pathetic.
The hallway to his cell ends up being hundreds of blocks long, and the end of it is in a completely isolated sector from the rest of the prison. He desperately wants to make a detour just to see if Mapicc is in there, but the exit is in the complete opposite direction based on where his guide is headed. The prison is likely riddled with Null guards regardless, and any one of them could easily hear his footsteps. With these factors... it’s safer to follow the ‘guard’ for now. He’ll ask about Mapicc once they’re out.
They stop in front of a wall, no doors in sight. It’s very different from the open entrance Jamato led him through. Below the wall lies a dispenser. A keycard checker. Not very original, Jamato. The LAW prison had this technology too.
His guide drops a slip of paper into the dispenser, stepping back as the wall opens up completely. They nod back to Spoke, walking out of the prison. Spoke follows closely behind, stepping out right before the wall closes back up. He checks his inventory. One minute left on his invisibility.
He looks back at the prison. He’ll come back for Mapicc as soon as he’s ready. He’ll gear back up once he splits off from this person, and he’ll do whatever he can to save Mapicc. And then, faced with his savior, Mapicc will surely forgive him. They can go back to being best friends again.
“Snap out of it,” The other grits, seeing his particles unmoving, “We don’t have a lot of time before the other guards rotate their shifts. Re-splash yourself before you’re seen. And make sure you’re on top of food. We’ve got another two-thousand blocks to go.”
Spoke nearly groans, re-splashing himself. His legs almost gave out when they were traversing the hallway earlier, and now they have to walk two-thousand more blocks? What could this person possibly be bringing him to?
“You’re weaker than I expected,” They sigh, “A far cry from what you will be soon. I can forgive this weakness for that reason alone.”
Spoke’s eye twitches, offended, and he’s about to retort before they splash him with strength and speed, restoring the strength in his legs.
“You couldn’t have done that earlier?” He can’t help but say.
“Is that even a question?” They roll their eyes, “Of course not. Three sets of particles are far easier to spot than just one.”
Spoke really doesn’t like the way this person talks. One sentence will be some kind of reprimand or remark about his weakness, and the next is talking about some ‘latent potential’ that, apparently, only one of them can see in Spoke. It’s clear that they have more ulterior motives than reasons to help Spoke in the first place, especially since they won’t reveal their identity to him. It reminds him of something he can’t quite put to words.
He supposes that this person probably has the same motivations he had for freeing Wemmbu. They want Spoke to do something for them. Despite their strange mannerisms and even stranger expectations, they remind Spoke a little bit of himself.
“I will re-splash us with speed once our timer is getting low. Let’s head out. Just stick behind me like you’ve been doing, and don’t forget to re-splash your invisibility until we get there,” They say, not waiting for Spoke to respond before sprinting forward.
Spoke rolls his eyes, following them regardless, “You bark out orders like it’s something you’re used to doing.”
“What’s it to you?” They respond without a beat, “My orders have gotten us this far already. Just keep listening and stop bothering me.”
Spoke is most certainly not the bother out of the two of them, but he can tell that the other’s ego is unwaveringly huge. As much as he hates to admit it, the longer they spend arguing, the more time it will take for him to prepare to save Mapicc. He’s sure the other realizes that he’s going through this thought process as well.
The rest of the journey, expedited by the usage of the speed and strength potions, goes on in silence. Only when they finally stop at a hole in the Nether Roof does Spoke ask a question that’s formed since he first was handed the shulker box.
“Where did you get the potion materials, anyway?”
He expects them to ignore him or brush the question aside like they have when he’s asked literally anything else about them.
“That pathetic excuse for a ‘king’ is quite powerless in the face of an army like Null,” his guide chuckles, “Null soldiers are supplied with shulkers full of every potion we may need.”
“And the invis?” Spoke continues, “I doubt that any Null soldier would need invisibility, considering you all found your own way to mask your identities. What’s with that, then?”
The other lets out a hum of acknowledgement, “Just some potions I had left over. Invisibility tends to stockpile up after the server was practically run by a group that completely banned it. You know, The LAW? Of course you do. You participated in their downfall, after all.”
How could they possibly know that? All of the LAW soldiers that participated were wiped out, save for a few generals and LettuceK. He doubts that any of the generals would have joined Null rather than leaving whatever’s left of the LAW. That would only leave..
“Were you a part of District 13?”
The guide looks down at the roof hole.
“We’ve spent enough time here. Your invisibility’s running out, and we don’t want to be spotted here. Drop down, there’s a vine to catch you below,” they respond, jumping down without giving him a chance to respond.
Again with not answering his questions. Spoke is really just left to his own assumptions with this person. He considers, just for a moment, that this just leads to another trap, but then reminds himself that despite how annoying they are, they’ve supplied him with resources and have yet to truly mislead him.
He jumps down. He falls rapidly, the surrounding biomes of the nether passing before him in a blur. Adrenaline surges through him, and before he can truly panic, a vine catches him as his guide promised.
In front of them lies dozens of different seated animals, the sounds of their collective noises ringing through Spoke’s ears.
“What’s with the dogs?” He asks, looking towards the other.
“Walk forwards with me,” they respond, “And look at their names.”
Spoke does so, and his eyes widen with shock. Every single one of these dogs is named ‘SpokeIsHere.’
“I’ve done extensive research on every single Null member that works in the prison. That includes Jamato himself. Every single one of them, at some point in the server, has tamed some kind of animal. I took the liberty to nametag them all, and today is the payoff for all of that work.”
Spoke understands completely now, why he couldn’t just run away, and why they were truly on a time crunch.
“We’re going to fake my death,” he states.
The other can’t hide the smile from his voice, “Good, yes. You understand. But we can’t kill them ourselves. We’re going to burn them so that only the names of the animals show up in the death message. Animal death messages bypass the chunk limit for their communicators, so all of the Null guards, as well as Jamato himself, will think that a guard burned you to death in that prison.”
It’s an unbelievably perfect plan. He can’t stop himself from admiring the effort that the other put in to put this plan forth, but there’s still one thing about this all that bothers him.
“Is one of these pets Mapicc’s?” He can’t help but ask.
“No,” they respond, “It could have been a good idea, had Mapicc been even close to the chunk range of your cell. But he’s not.”
What are they talking about? How could Mapicc not be in the chunk range if he’s in the prison? Even if Mapicc had his own solitary cell, he should, by all means, be in some kind of range of Spoke’s own cell. And yet, this person says that Mapicc ‘isn’t even close.’
“What do you mean by that?” He grits, the air around him suddenly turning to ice, “If what you say is true, then that implies that Mapicc isn’t even in the prison at all. Then where is he? Where did Jamato take him?”
They laugh, really and truly, and the sound makes Spoke feel sick.
“It seems you are under a misconception. Jamato let Mapicc go as soon as he had you secured in that cell. He gave Mapicc the choice to see you again before giving him his freedom, and Mapicc chose to leave. Do you understand? Mapicc left you to rot.”
Spoke drops to his knees, “No, no that can’t be true. Mapicc wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t go without-”
“I was there,” They interrupt, “I was standing right behind Jamato as he let Mapicc go. I watched Mapicc run through that exit without looking back. You need to get it through your head. He. Is done. With you.”
No. Mapicc wouldn’t do that, he couldn’t possibly go through with that. They have to be lying, they’re just trying to get to him, he knows that if he breaks into the prison, Mapicc will be right there, waiting to forgive-
“Wake up! Are you seriously forgetting your last interaction with him now? We were all there to watch it. Mapicc doesn’t want you anymore. Get it through your head. It’s time to move on. It’s time to become something better than what you could ever imagine. Use this pain and turn it into something great.”
Mapicc doesn’t want him anymore. Mapicc left without him and didn’t even look back. Mapicc probably doesn’t even think about him anymore.
“Mapicc is gone,” he admits aloud, voice shaky and hoarse, “Then... what do I do now? What am I supposed to do without him?”
They push the lava bucket into his hands.
“Only once you’ve lost everything do you truly get the chance to become something more than you could ever dream of. Now is the time for you to take that future with your own hands. It starts right here and now. All you have to do now,” they push him towards the animals, “Is seize it.”