Curate, connect, and discover
—From June 8 2021
TW // mentions of injury , nukes , mentions of war, mentions of death, major character death, tubbo death
Nothing felt right. That was all right, all right, the whole left side of his body was burnt badly and he was beaten and bruised. He’d only been able to escape due to the army of totems left behind. Totems. He wondered what would happen to them in his final act, of the final act. Would they be used? Blown to smithereens? Maybe they wouldn’t even get scratched? Dropping them from the highest point of the SMP didn’t work, what was to say nukes would? He staggered over to the military base, abandoned for the war, looking worse for wear. Manifold had kicked him out long since and this was enforced via turrets, but with them gone to manifold’s inventory ‘to shift the tides of war in his favor’, there were none left to defend the base. (Everything nowadays was about the war. That was how Ranboo had gone, a small pendant safely secured around his neck with gold strings, gone to help the syndicate. For the war. For his family. For his friends.) He’d gone in guns blazing, expecting death, but even then they’d failed to kill him. (They’d failed to kill Tommy too, and in embarrassment had killed him off in the veil of night, in his own bed, in his own home.) He stopped retreating into memories of the far past, taking strut after strut into the lab he once shared. He’d considered Manifold a friend, and for a brief moment wondered if they would forgive him, if he didn’t draw the curtains. They stood before the furthest room, metal door left ajar, left unconsidered. Paper was strewn about everywhere in the corridor, covered in dirt and dust, as were the walls with vines. He ignored the papers, useless in all their redacted glory. Within the room he walked up to the rightmost wall, counting the grooves between the tiles. Made of a mixture of bone, concrete, and quartz, a powerful block that they’d invented together, pulled together by a common silicone mixture recommended by Foolish. In what felt like seconds he’d counted all the way up to twenty, and sure enough, right there, was a small ridge, that he’d marked out a long time ago. He placed the lever that he’d stolen from one of the control panels. If he was doing this, he was doing it his way. A brief image of Wilbur in his final moments appeared before him, just as Philza had described it. He wondered for a second, if they were any different at all. A button or a lever, all that it took. The stampede of feet echoed in the distance, ringing in his ears. Maybe Eret was wrong, maybe nothing does change. He felt himself smile, for the first time in a long while, as he braced himself for the inevitable. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing” J- Manifold’s voice echoed from the doorway. At this, he could only let slip one sentence. No bitter resentment in his tone, no positive delight. A simple, genuine drawl. One practiced and thought through.
“I’ll get to be the antagonist to their protagonist.”
It was said under his breath, with such conviction, such childishness he said it, but such was honesty. He leaned his back against the lever, arms having gone completely numb a little ago. The burns rushed against himself in a cold flare, darkness overtaking him. O’ sweet freedom at last; and although he wasn’t a particularly religious person, he wondered for a brief second, if they’d ever collide again in other worlds.