Chapter Text
Mapicc slammed into the ground.
For a moment, he lay there, winded, ready for his eyes to stay shut and never open, ready for pain to burst and bloom through his whole body.
Despite the heaviness of the impact, Mapicc felt no such pain, but he didn’t dare second-guess the fact he was probably dead.
I hope you die, Spoke, he thought, scrunching his eyes tight, ready for death to take him.
But nothing happened.
Mapicc slowly opened his eyes and was greeted with not much else other than inky blackness. If he shut his eyes, he probably couldn’t tell the difference if not for seeing himself against a black floor and black walls and and black ceiling. The darkness was not like a fog but rather constantly there—it never moved, it just stretched on and on and on and on.
More than anything, Mapicc was confused.
If this was supposed to be heaven (or hell, Mapicc was an open-minded player and honestly, he wouldn’t be surprised), it was certainly boring as hell. Or heaven.
“You might be wondering where you are,” came a voice behind Mapicc, and he flipped over and scrambled away on his back pitifully. He was still winded, even if he wasn’t hurt. A heavy netherite boot stomped on his ankle and dragged him back. Mapicc let out a yell that echoed around them.
Oh, damn being a fighter. How could someone so accustomed to getting hurt be so scared of netherite? Sure, he had nothing. Literally nothing, because Jamato had made sure of that, but just because this figure was probably in full netherite, fully enchanted and framing them against the void, didn’t mean he should be scared.
He was desperately trying to tell himself otherwise, but Mapicc was more terrified than he had ever been in his life.
God was in a black void and was going to kill him. What a way to go out—betrayed by the guy he thought and thought and believed again and again could change and then Mapicc was to be smited by the heavens.
If only this were what Spoke was going through, Mapicc internally sighed, basking in the thought of Spoke being banned and not being able to hurt anyone else. A server without any of Spoke’s stupid lies was Mapicc’s kind of server.
Too bad he was going to die. Mapicc made a last ditch effort and swatted at the boot that trapped him. It didn’t seem to do anything, so Mapicc instead decided to lay down and accept his fate.
“Oh, relax, relax!” God said, disgruntled, and Mapicc whipped his neck around to be face-to-face not with God but with the player that had been standing right next to Spoke as Mapicc had been thrown right in the void.
It was the NULL commander, who had caused quite a bit more harm than good to Mapicc and Jumper and just about everyone associated with them.
Jumper. Mapicc bit his lip and hoped she wasn’t dead either. He hadn’t seen her with Spoke—not in that split second before he fell. There was a real possibility she could be horrifically dead because of something that Spoke dragged her into.
Mapicc’s words died in his throat, at the sword strapped on their hip, one of their hands resting on it as if ready to take it out at any moment. He was going to die and it was going to be so lame and stupid—
Underscore(was that their name? _________ seemed a bit redundant) snorted and noted very observantly, “You’re so jumpy.”
They reached towards him and the hand near their sheath wrapped around the hilt of the sword dangerously. Fear spiked in Mapicc’s stomach and twisted it into painful knots.
“AAAAAUGGHH—GET AWAY FROM ME!” Mapicc found himself shrieking involuntarily. The commander made a scrunched up face (despite the fact they had no clear face) and yanked him up by his hood, holding him at eye level so that Mapicc’s feet were slightly dragging on the ground. Mapicc raised them up and began to pathetically kick at their armored shins, throwing out his arms and scrabbling at their chestplate. With their other hand, they pinched the bridge of their nose and let out an exasperated sigh.
“I don’t even know why I stick around on this server anymore,” they sighed and dropped Mapicc, turning away and crossing their arms like a stern teacher. He fell into a heap of himself on the ground, crawling away when they didn’t watch him. “All of you are incompetent.”
“You don’t have aura for being old as hell, bro,” Mapicc couldn’t help but quip as he made his clever escape. Underscore noticed this and yanked him back by his hoodie again, and Mapicc rolled over and landed flat on his back. “Ok! Ok! I’m sorry! Geez.”
“I need you to listen to me,” Underscore said as Mapicc stood back up. “When you fall into the void we lose the server to a great evil. NULL—“
“I get it,” Mapicc raised an eyebrow and shoved his hands into his pockets, slouching so he hid his chin in the collar of his hoodie. “Spoke finds a way to be a power hungry overlord and destroys the server. Two years with him is enough for me to know it’s probably him that dooms us. It’s probably him who takes over NULL. That’s why he did all of that. I’m not that dumb.”
He rolled his eyes. It was almost predictable no matter how horrible or weird that sounded to say. It sounded normal coming out of his mouth because Spoke was far beyond saving.
Somehow, part of him hated thinking that Spoke wasn’t able to be saved. What had happened to the Spoke he’d met two years ago? What had happened, or had it been all along? How much wasn’t real? Mapicc shut his eyes as he thought, but the commander’s words jolted him back into the void, into the sight of shimmering armor.
“Yes, and you’re the only one who can stop him,” Underscore hummed, their pose rigid and unmoving. “You catch on quickl—“
“So I get to kill him? You’re going to send me to kill him?” Mapicc knew his eyes lit up and he wasn’t ashamed.
“No!” The commander cried, suddenly throwing their hands out and waving them panickedly. “No, whatever you do, you mustn’t kill him. It’s crucial that he lives.”
Mapicc sighed, drawing it out theatrically. He narrowed his eyes and said, “if Spoke being the leader of NULL, if that’s what you’re trying to imply, why’d you even let him be leader? I thought you were supposed to be super smart.”
“This is a lot bigger than just killing Spoke, Mapicc,” they said calmly, avoiding his question with a nervous laugh. “All that matters is that I have some commands. Commands that will help us fix all of this…well, among other things.”
“This is your doing?” Mapicc looked around at the void. The commander nodded earnestly. “Ok, whatever, cool. Why should I even care? I don’t want to be associated with Spoke anymore. I don’t want anything to do with him. Unless it’s to kill him.“
“Like I said,” Underscore said slowly as if he thought Mapicc couldn’t get it through his skull, enunciating almost annoyingly. “You are the only person who can do this. You’re the only one who can talk him out of chasing after Jamato—talk him out of lying to you and your other friend…”
“Jumper,” Mapicc corrected. “She deserves to kill Spoke just as much as I do. But she’ll be less tempted than I am. Why not just get her to do it?”
“Stop trying to cheat your way out of it just because you don’t want to do it!” They tensed their fingers in an exasperated way. “You are the only one who can do it! That, or we all die and the world ends. Which one do you want?”
“I guess…” Mapicc huffed. “I guess I want to keep playing on the server. With Planet and maybe Minute and everyone else I’ve met here who isn’t him. But I don’t like this. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to see him again and let him force me into this grave he’s digging.”
“I don’t either,” Underscore assured him. “Please. I’ll be with you, but you need to be the one to change fate. This way you can play with those people and not have to worry about doom and despair.”
“…what do I have to do?” Mapicc finally asked, and the commander gasped happily. Mapicc had no idea that a commander of NULL could be anything more than a silent soldier. This one—maybe it was just the fact they were in a position of power—was so animated it was nearly eerie.
They reached out a hand as if Mapicc was supposed to take it. He hesitated and the NULL commander kept talking anyway.
“I’m going to send you back in time,” they said. “To before Purgatory, to before when Jamato started to send us after Spoke. You’ll remember everything. Both of us will. I need you to somehow make sure that Spoke never becomes commander. I don’t have enough information—“ the commander chewed on their lip fretfully, “—to know exactly what needs to happen. But you have as many chances as you need to do this.”
Mapicc looked at them long and hard, closing his eyes in thought.
“Take this,” Underscore said, pulling in their hands and pushing a book and quill into his. It was blank inside. Mapicc looked at them skeptically. “It’s the way the timeline resets. All you need to do is draw a tally each time you want to reset the server. It’ll put you in the same spot and this way you can count your progress. Uh, if you end up dying, I end up dying, or if Spoke ends up dying, it should reset itself.”
“How?” Mapicc asked and turned it over. It didn’t look special at all. And there was no way a book should be able to do that—nothing should be able to do that. Nobody should be able to make a book like that. He looked back up with a perplexed frown.
“I have my ways.” The Commander said. “NULL has more powers than just an army. We have been around for longer than anybody else.”
Mapicc just nodded like he understood any of it. The commander seemed satisfied with his reaction and stood like they were waiting for him to go in, to use it.
He brandished the quill like it was a weapon. He looked at it—it was so unsuspecting—but it held the weight of the universe. The power he had just been given…
…Mapicc didn’t like to think of himself as a particularly selfish player, but somehow he knew what he was going to do the moment he started. If he really had infinite tries. If he really did. If he could do anything he wanted, he would decide to first be a little selfish.
The Null commander might hate him afterwards, but if he really was the only one who could ‘save the timeline’, he deserved to have his own freedom. He didn’t care what they said.
Underscore nodded at him, impatiently pushing him to use it as if the artifact didn’t hold the weight of the entire timeline of the universe. “Come on,” they said. “You lead us.”
Mapicc made a small stroke on the first page—maybe the size of half his pinky, and the commander melted away and was replaced with open, midnight sky, yellow grass glistening like flax, and the side of an unsuspecting mountain. Mapicc took a moment to jolt and look around, trying to find out if any of it was real. He reached out and touched the tree beside him, feeling the grooves of the wood just as he would any other tree. He looked towards the cliffside with a sinking feeling as he figured out where he was.
It wasn’t just any mountain. It was the mountain where Spoke’s base was. The mountain where, once Mapicc had escaped NULL’s custody, had come back to find him and save the people he knew that Spoke would have been looking for. If only he had known.
Oh, who was Mapicc kidding? He didn’t have to wish that he had known better. He was back in the moment and Mapicc knew everything. Even all the stuff he wanted to forget.
With a sigh, Mapicc looked down and knew that his armor would be terrible. Which it was. It was weak and basically falling off him already and in a couple hits by a sword he would be dead. It didn’t help that the axe he had was equally as bad—that didn’t matter. He could do the work he needed to complete done no matter what. No matter what he had. And he was still invisible, because he was still on the run.
He had his stasis at his side and the signed book in his hands like he was just about to give it to Spoke and send them on the wild goose chase that was, fundamentally, chasing Jamato back to the Farlands, and ending them up with everything that had happened. Mapicc shut it out of his mind, not wanting to think about the fact that this whole think could have been his fault.
Mapicc quickly stored the book in favor of his dingy iron axe. It sat heavy in his pocket, a burden on his shoulders. Mapicc needed some serious stress relief.
The door shifted open and Spoke and Jumper both popped their heads out like nervous cats, staring him down first with worry and then with a confused smile. They both knew he had nothing. That much was obvious, so he wasn’t a threat to them. Spoke came out of the door and peered at him like he was a stray dog that had ended up on their doorstep.
Just like in the old universe, Mapicc held up his bucket of milk and downed it in one chug, causing the invisibility to melt off him like oil on water and show the player beneath. He licked whatever milk was left away and stared them both down with what he felt was an appropriately serious expression. His bucket fell to the ground.
Both Jumper and Spoke’s mouths dropped open, but no sound came out. Spoke stepped towards him, once, twice, an unconscious decision.
Normally, Mapicc would start talking, but he knew what he wanted to do. Maybe it was selfish. Maybe it wasn’t for the good of the server.
But Mapicc felt he deserved it, to finally get some closure, even if not for long.
His axe aimed for the neck.