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There was one thing about piston bolts that were annoying, yes they were efficient, easy to build and didn’t require a lot of precision to use, but, in contrast to those pay offs they were actually a lot slower than your other highly mechanised methods of transport. Just barely good enough for Wifies to justify over using an elytra.
He didn’t like how much time he had to himself, the prattle of his skull beat out by nothing now that he had nothing to look at, only able to focus on the rustle of his hair being whipped by the air passing by and the mechanics of the pistons, short of making him fall asleep, they didn’t do too much to settle his mind frayed with nerves.
Against himself he found his hand twitching towards his comm again, after his chat with Cube his mind had only become more crowded with what if’s that got him virtually nowhere but had the unfortunate side effect of wearing his consciousness to the bone.
He brushed his thumb over the screen's cracked surface, scrolling idly through contacts. Hummer’s still his top contact, second only to Cube who he’d just texted. He tried to avert his eyes from the third contact in his comm, truly it gave away how lonely he was.
It was Parrot. Latest message dated to a year ago.
Wifies wasn’t ready to confront all that yet, so, he didn’t, and scrolled swiftly by, instead locking on to the names that didn’t make him want to rip his heart out of his chest. Even if only by a very small margin.
He shouldn’t be asking anything of them, he knew that. Wifies really had no right to them, nor their time after everything, but he found himself drafting up texts anyways in a sort of hail Mary.Start from the top and make your way down the list. You’re okay. In for four, hold for seven, out for eight. Just like Parrot taught you.
You whisper to _Kenadian_:
I know I’m probably the last person you expected to hear from right now but I’m here to ask for a favour
If you still play here that is
I know I said I was going to stay gone.
I know that I lied to you and everyone else.
And I know you see him when you look me in the eye.
I know all that. I think that argument stuck with me more than you thought it would.
In a good way.
I think I’m in a sort of
Better place now? I like to think so
Not better, but I’m no worse, right?
I visited the old factory a few months ago to set myself straight actually.
He's still not there. No one else was either actually, no clones, no nothing
It was kinda eerie. Like, your childhood home when your moving
Or something, I don't really know what thats like
I know it was probably not the best thing I could have done but you know me, I can’t really help myself.
But, clones aside
I think I have a job for you, one that I have a feeling you’d like
If you're in, I’m gonna be at the paragon base for the next few hours,
I’d like to see you there.
your favourite brother (probably),
Wifies.
Wifies sent it before he had the chance to think about what he was doing, unable to see the text with his own unfocused eyes. Deciding instead of waiting for any activity, or to re read the message any, to immediately open the chat for his other dear sibling, beginning to type out the next letter with equal haste and pointedly ignoring the shake in his fingers, nor the amount he stalled while trying to fix his typos.
He was okay. Everything is fine.
You whisper to Wato1876:
Hi
It's been a while hasn’t it? Did you miss me?
Probably not.
You’ve probably already seen what I sent to Ken so I won’t repeat myself all that much.
You were always the nicest to me, back then, y'know?
I‘ll never forget that.
It meant a lot more to me than I gave on at the time.
Honestly, how much you understood kinda scared me, if I’m being honest with you.
Everytime I came to you with something, some messed up delusion, you’d always meet me half way and tell me that it was okay.
I needed that.
I think I know what you mean now when you talked about the hues of the dirt muting to grey.
I can’t look at the walls of our old base anymore.
They all look the same. Even if in my mind I know white should be blinding its as if I can't see any of it at all anymore.
Black too, neither of them hold their polarity anymore.
I don’t know what I’m saying.
Maybe your tendency to ramble has me doing it too.
But seriously,
You're welcome to come with Ken too, if you two want to see me. Or you can come alone.
Having either one of you here would mean the world to me.
I think the only days I had fun as the Director would be when you were with me.
Yours,
Wifies. (the real one)
Wifies exhaled slowly, clutching his hands till he could feel nothing but the sting of his too long nails distressing synthetic skin, communicator sat loosely in his lap as he willed every nerve in his body to calm.
That was awful.
He could still hear their voices in the back of his head, see the image of Ken looking up at him like he was a completely different person, and smell the stagnancy as soon as they’d both left, feel the redstone against his hands as he set the trap alone instead of with two.
It was Ken who’d called him a coward. Wato who'd said he’d needed help.
Both of them were true.
But that didn’t make the sting fade, did it?
Tears pricked idly at the clones eyes, lip warbling to spew some apology to someone it would never reach, but no words ever came out. No matter how many tears run, no matter how much he'd scolded himself.
He'd just never be able to say it, would he? Typing it was easy, typing anything was easy. But putting the words to air was just something he felt incapable of doing.
He must have really been a coward. A cheap, scheming coward.
Did these letters even mean anything if he couldn't say them with his full chest?
Wifies steeled his nerve and picked up the communicator again, scrolling half absent to the next name on its list. Trying desperately not to think about it. But the thoughts continued to plague him as he began to write. Not bothering to clear his vision more than what he needed to.
You whisper to Derapchu:
Yo.
I don’t know how to start this lol
It must be quite the surprise to see me still alive huh?
Me too
Call me a liar, you're probably right, the trap was something only Ken, Wato and I worked on, don’t beat yourself up about not realising any sooner, kay?
Traps aside, if you have any faith left in me, I want you to meet me back at the base in around an hour. No incentive this time. I mean, unless you want the loot that is.
I’m probably not going to touch any of it, personally.
So be my guest I guess. What was mine is now all yours.
I know what I did to you and Jumper was messed up. You don’t need to tell me twice.
It was probably really cathartic seeing the same happen to me, right?
Sorry. For ruining that, I mean
I want to make things right with both of you. Not as the Director, but as your friend.
Or, well, at least an ally.
No more going behind your back
No more lies
No more schemes
I swear on my life.
It’s just gonna be you, me, my friend and everyone else together again on a plan I think you might actually agree with me on.
I’ll make it all up to you and her one day. How could I not, right?
I don't know if I can do it now, say whatever you need me to say, but I promise some day they'll come to air.
So just, think about it. Please?
I’ve heard that's your best quality (/j)
Yours, as always,
Wifies
Wifies muttered something incomprehensible even to himself under his breath, not so much as second guessing himself before sending the message off. That was the easiest this was going to get.
They had been friends, still probably were in some recess of Wifies’ mind, as much as he’d tried to push himself away from it all. There was no doubt at the very least that he and Derapchu had been friends.
The same didn’t go for Jumper. God it wasn’t even close. He had a lot to say and not near enough space to get it across, he just hoped to god she'd understand him, if not now then never, right?
You whisper to JumperWho:
This must be your worst nightmare.
It's mine too.
We have that in common at the very least if nothing else.
I
I can’t say anything other than I’m sorry.
There's nothing else I can say. Right?
I’m doing better, a lot better than I was before. I mean, if I wasn’t I wouldn’t be messaging you, right?
I think I found some healthy middle ground between him and I.
In my mind anyways.
I remember my final day on this server pretty well.
Our talk most of all.
When you said I was like Leo I didn’t really know what you meant at the time
I mean, I sort of did
But I didn’t know the weeds of it.
I see what you mean now.
And I admit it.
You were right.
At the time anyway.
But that being said, I want to prove you wrong, just one more time. So humour me, will you?
I still have that book. It's somewhere in my ender chest.
If you come to the base, the one by Paragon, I’ll burn it. In front of you. I’ll even let you do the burning if it makes you feel any better.
I don’t expect you to reply, or even show up, I know that if I were in your position, I’d have left you on read too.
But if there's any part of you that believes in me, then I’d like to see you there.
This plan I’m working on is for the better of the server. Not for me. Not for him.
No strings attached.
Your friend (hopefully),
Wifies.
With the final messages sent, and his communicator shoved deep into his pocket, Wifies looked up to the empty nether sky and breathed in once. Deeply. Feeling the heady air sink into artificial lungs, and be exhaled as pure Co2.
It was done. Whether or not anything came from those letters was entirely out of his hands. All he could possibly do now was wait and see if he got any reply, and while Wifies was never a particularly impatient man, the fact that they hadn’t yet replied to his sappy declarations of self improvement made him want to curl up and throw himself off the roof and into a lava pit. If only to feel the lava char his nerves.
The ceasing of the piston bolt jolted him out of his ideation all but suddenly.
He had to get back to the stage, Hummer was waiting on him, as was the rest of the server, if things were truly as bad as Cube said they were, and god forbid he leave Parrot to fend on his own again, right?
Wifies stepped out of the piston bolt, legs shaky and half dead, and brushed himself off, now face to face with the nether portal, which was hypnotising in its own right, hazily reminding him of just a few hours ago, when he’d stepped out of a machine the very same with Hummer in tow.
He’d do anything to see that wonder on his face again, Wifies decided, the memory of it making him rosy only second to none to the nethers natural heat.
That was all the incentive he needed to throw himself through the vertigo inducing portal, second only to his duty to the mission of course.
Faintly, Wifies felt his communicator ding in his pocket, once, twice, then three times.
_Kenadian_ whispers to you:
Wato1876 whispers to you:
Derapchu whispers to you:
Maybe it wasn’t such a hopeless call after all.