Work Text:
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Mob was getting bored of solely playing his solo world. Look, it was fun at first; he didn’t know— maybe it stayed that way for a week? Having someone else around, even if they weren’t a complete human, served as a fun distraction when he wasn’t doing anything.
Like when he went mining, there’d be the little occasional chime of Verity going,
“Mob? Do you want to talk?” Which could have been annoying if it weren’t for how easy Verity was to talk to.
Then there were the more boring days when all he’d do was try farming or log on so Verity would have company.
Lately, it’d been solely boring days. And to be real, he couldn’t keep playing with it like that.
It was only one biome that he’d fully explored. No crap, he got bored of it after the first week.
“Verity, do you think you can join servers?” Mob hadn’t been doing anything that’d imply that question, having just finished re-tilling the farm. Still no water there.
“‘Cause I have a little idea.”
Verity paused, not saying anything. Which seemed to work as an indicator for Mob to backtrack, considering how he got every other time it ‘sounded’ like he wanted to leave.
“It’s not that I wanna stop playing with you. Na— it’s more like the opposite, ‘cause I had this idea last night.”
So now that little ball knew how to speak.
“It takes some tweaking to my code, but I could try to.”
“Yeah?”
“Depending on what server you want me to join, of course. I’d also have to update myself back up to the latest versions.”
Oh, he hadn’t even thought of that part yet. Still, that sounded like one good deal to him.
Even if it meant he’d be doing this plan with an all-glitchy Verity, doing something other than farm and mine worked fine with him.
Mob messed around with one of the carrots he was carrying, feigning nonchalance as if it’d make him sound any less lonely while asking:
“Do you think we could play Bedwars then? I don’t know, just something small like that would be cool—”
“Of course!”
No hard pause like before. No, Verity was still all smiles while talking. “Give me a day or two to fix up my code, but of course we could, Mob!”
“Right, right.” So, the first concern was addressed. His second one, on the other hand, was a bit more ‘subjective,’ to say the least.
“Are you good at it? If you don’t know, then I could just get Twixxel and Grox to join, and we could play together.”
Somewhere around the names, Verity’s smile had slightly dimmed. But the ball still responded with that all-too-happy attitude, “I’m perfect. We could just play duos together, and it’d be fine.”
Sure.
“‘Kay then, man. Just let me know if you need anything on my end by tomorrow.”
And that was the end of it. Mob didn’t fully expect the code tweaking to happen, still loading up the world the same as usual.
Then he almost instantly had to leave and rejoin.
He’d left out of shock and some fear. The rejoin was because he realized how stupid it was to be scared of Verity.
Verity had been in his house multiple times when he joined; he wasn’t meant to treat this any differently.
Even if he had a really odd body and was clearly some plastic version of a human.
Mob didn’t even say anything at first, grabbing at the smiling ‘thing’ in front of him to be met with the texture of plastic. “Yikes, you have to change this,” the comment came out under his breath, feeling cold skin instead of flesh.
“I think it works!” He hadn’t even said his usual hello to Mob, only trying to move at the weird joints he’d created for himself. “Do you mean it looks bad? If it looks unappealing, I could alter it—”
“No, you look.” Mob paused, staring at the other’s face. Verity had tried to make himself stupidly handsome, even going through the process of giving himself dimples.
“You look like a commercial. I don’t know, it’s not that.”
He’d made the skin too everything. Stupid way to describe it, yeah, but Mob couldn’t understand what he was looking at.
Verity had made himself taller than him solely out of spite; that much was obvious. It was already harder to be taller than someone part-enderman! Otherwise, everything else was so perfectly carved he was disturbed.
Even making eye contact gave Mob that instinctual uneasy feeling. “Eugh, you just sort of freak me out.”
“Do I need to change it before we play together?”
Oh yeah, that was why!
“Na, nah, I think there’s a scientific term for whatever I’m feeling anyway.”
“Uncanny valley.”
“Right.”
Accurate enough. Man, Verity would creep out any other players the two of them would play with. Mob grimaced at how he had to stand up on his tippy-toes to reach the other’s head, but he still did it.
Upon pinching the other’s cheek and pulling, he realized that the face was still that same rubber ball texture.
“This is so weird.”
“But you like it, right?”
Like was an overstatement, a major one at that. “It’s something.”
Verity didn’t look displeased by that answer, but he could tell there was a connotation behind it based on: “Positively something or negatively?”
A pause.
“Something,” Mob said in reply.
When Verity’s smile dropped, he tried to backtrack with the stupidest compliments he could, “Something splendid, I mean! It’s beautiful, like all your— uhm, hair, it’s really nice and soft to the touch. You did good on that.” It was hard to retract a statement calling him ugly, wasn't it?
Not that Mob had done it intentionally! It was at most just some inappropriate timing. (Even if that was exactly what he thought.)
"I can change the texture for the rest of me, then. It just requires a good subject to copy, and you aren't exactly ideal, Mob."
"Meaning?"
They were both insulting each other now, weren't they? Except Verity was more subtle about it, having the excuse that he was only an AI helper friend and not somebody with emotions.
Even if he knew outright saying, "You have far too many endermen parts to be compatible, and I prefer my build to be more accurate to my other half," was an insult!
"Right."
He wasn't in the mood to criticize everything wrong with the other in retaliation, only grumbling, "I'll get back on when you're done with your body, then we go on Bedwars or Skywars."
"Do you have to leave, Mob? Don't you just wanna watch me?"
"Nope!"
Mob left the world before Verity could continue protesting, letting out a sigh of relief at the fact that he was out. Even if being out meant he'd gotten five emails sent directly to his spam in the span of three minutes. That was a problem for later.
And as all time must pass, later came, meaning he was forced to get back on. Ignoring emails that got deleted would be fine; it was harder to ignore the barrage of messages on his phone, with Verity sending him things like:
> Log back on Mob.
> I'm done.
> I'm waiting, Mob.
Not scary in hindsight, but super irritating to get while trying to scroll reels without thinking about that.
Logging back in to meet a 'newly-reformed' Verity wasn't much fun. Mainly because he hadn't done much except try to make himself less creepy. His features were noticeably adjusted to be 'cuter,' which worked to the tiniest degree.
His eyes had no shine in them.
Verity was looking straight down at him, an expectant smile as if he wasn't practically a tower. The most Mob could force out was, "It's better."
No, it was not. It was only cute, but that wasn't fixing the fact that the bot had accidentally given himself a horrible resting bitch face. It didn't look like he was resting; he looked as if he'd murder somebody for the wrong sentence.
"Good to know!"
"So, regarding which version—"
"It's Hypixel."
"All I needed to know then. You know, I would have almost asked for the IP," Verity continuing that sentence was a sign it'd go downhill, eagerly adding, "But those are different than your personal one, right?"
Oh, so it was just him trying to do that creepy intimidation via mild threats.
"You know the answer to that."
"And I know yours!"
"Good to know, Verity."
Maybe this wouldn't be as fun as he wouldn't have been as fun as he thought. Nonetheless, the moment he logged off to join Hypixel, that yellow-colored skin was directly next to him.
Of course there were a few confused head turns, but Mob was dragging him to the queue in an instant. No socializing, especially with how stupid he'd made himself.
"I thought we were doing Bedwars—"
"Nope. Skywars. Win it or lose it."
It wasn't like he'd be demanding often, but that tone snapped Verity back into shape. He accepted the dragging; Mob only realized how bad it'd go after they were already in.
He didn't ask about Verity's skill, 'cause, y'know, an AI should just predict all the enemies' moves. Instead, he stood at a crafting table and looked like the most useless guard Mob had ever seen. It took him saying, "Can you go find the chests at mid? Or bridge out? Or do something?"
Verity did, but the second he tried to mine ores, all Mob read was:
> Verity was stomped by TheMostMayo.
"Oh my God," Mob groaned under his breath, trying his hardest not to ragequit.
As he looked to see what had happened specifically, all he saw was someone running around with a fishing rod with great knockback. "Oh, my God." That time, the whine was more controlled.
Then there was a duo running for him.
Putting up a good fight and all aside, he was getting jumped. Upon getting back into the lobby with Verity, he was met with that same smiley face as if shit was sweet.
"You're dogshit."
Mob wasn't even trying to sugarcoat it; that last round had bubbled up some frustration he needed to let out.
“I can’t predict the future, Mob.”
But he knew everything, apparently.
Is what Mob would have retorted with, but he settled on arguing with
“You literally could, though. Like, if you tried hard enough.”
“Not really.”
“Yes, really!”
“I’m not doing kindergarten-level arguing with you.”
Verity’s sass would have irritated him more if it weren’t for the fact that he had to accept how trash the other was. Unfortunately. Even if being that bad at normal games should’ve been unacceptable, it was noticeably more for a robot. How could you hypothetically perfect PVPing and still be this trash at it?
Mob froze in front of the Skywars queue, somewhat internally debating with himself and ignoring the glare Verity shot at him. "If we play Bedwars, okay— could you at least, like, at the very, very least, make sure our bed doesn't get broken?" That was simple, wasn't it? Just standing around the bed and predicting who'd come next.
"Of course!"
"Just checking, 'cause y'know last time I told you to do something as simple as, I don't know," all of Mob's exaggerated pauses were clearly getting under the other's skin, but that needed emphasis, "Staying at home and not dying. I don't know how you even died doing that!"
He would've continued if it weren't for the way Verity's face morphed. "Sorry."
Nothing else was said except a small, "That's what I thought." Well, Verity had him there anyway.
Putting them in the queue for Bedwars looked fine at first. Normal, nothing out of the ordinary, then "Dude, is this guy following us?"
TheMostMayo, again. He'd seen what happened last game, all the fishing rod clutching versus multiple different people. There was some other guy on his team too, but Mob was willing to ignore that.
Verity, on the other hand:
"Something's wrong."
"Dawg, just let me bridge to the diamond."
"Something's terribly wrong."
The groan he let out at that could've been heard worldwide; he persisted, ignoring Verity's long list of complaints in the background. That method seemed to do him good, being able to get the diamonds he needed, yada-yada.
Except, as he looked away for what must've been five seconds. He saw that same name, the one with that Mayo guy.
Holy shit.
Lord, or whatever, comboing Verity off of the edge and breaking their bed the millisecond Mob was too far to help. Running back didn't save much, reading the small:
> D3rlord3 claimed the royal bed of Yellow!
> D3rlord3 formally executed Verity!
Dude. With kill message cosmetics, too?
"I'm getting that bed." It was his final promise to himself, in a way. Because for one, he was totally fucked. That little slime skin was some absolute sweat, and his teammate wasn't much better. They had something all planned out.
Yet when he went for their bed, all that 'knight' skin did was glance over at him before focusing back on whatever his teammate was doing. Which meant, thankfully, Mob got it.
Then he immediately got his own death message. It wasn't too surprising; that Mayo guy was a whole different level of sweat. Lifetime kills and all on display too.
It was hard for him to even blame Verity for it that time as well. Mob had left him alone, and the guy he went up against was clearly better at the game than him.
Maybe they weren't built for these games.
"I'm doing one more, and if you lose, I'm getting off for the day." This was the one Verity could be good at, the one he'd be exactly perfect for if he put in a real effort.
Building.
Verity didn't say anything about their last two matches in PVP-based things, only uttering something about it being unfair for the other teams if he were to do this. "You understand I can memorize tutorials at a glance, right, Mob?"
"Mhm."
"So I could get banned for hacking?"
"Just lock in."
He could become a philosopher with the advice he was giving out, couldn't he? Just absolutely life-changing, even if it was actively changing the AI's life for the worse.
Mob didn't even bother seeming focused, going on his phone for bits of the round and practically avoiding all of the theme. He hadn't paid a lick of attention to what Verity was asking either, giving his almost automated "mhm"s or "sure"s to each question.
Which worked!
Finally, they would win, and it wouldn't be some long round that was a nothingburger—
As the two of them transitioned through the other builds, Mob noticed a pattern. Dear God, everyone was either really good, or he was being flashed. The two of them had been practically flashed at least six times, with Verity naturally going, "Those are horribly inaccurate to anatomy."
"What do you know about that?"
"I've seen yours."
The fuck?
"We need to get you a mute button. I— dude." Mob didn't even know how else to respond, sighing before staring at who won.
That was three big ones.
"We can play together tomorrow, Verity."
"But Mob! There's so much else we could do, like start a skyblock, or-"
He left the server and turned off his computer before another word got out. So many things to question, but to be real, he was not spending his time figuring that out.
Instead, he was doomscrolling.