Everything falls apart.
(LAST CHAPTER YAY YAY YAY)
They squeeze the handlebars of the hoverbike that Hazard had helped train them how to ride, trying not to think about the last time they had been on a computer.
Or the fact that behind Dark, a trail of computers had been sparking out of the network, burning up and dying in brilliant flashes like stars.
Dark wouldn't hurt them.
Right?
The first issue they encountered was a barrier, when they had first been testing the idea. Of course, they made sure it was dormant. During hours when no sane person would come online. From there, they could start testing.
A lot of things had been tested against the barrier. Only one had worked.
"You're sure you want to do this?" Chosen asks.
"You're just going to end up making it worse," Vic grumbles, and for what it's worth, Chosen doesn't argue. Despite their mission to protect Noogai, they... weren't great with the emotional side of things. None of them were, really. When you're only made to fight, that's kind of how arguments go.
For most of them, they couldn't just run away from their problems. Therein lied the problem; Dark could. They could run faster than any of the rest of them.
And the only one who could catch up was fighting with them.
"You're hesitating," Chosen says, unhelpfully.
"I know. Shut up, or I might kick your ass and disappear too."
They expect a laugh. They don't get one.
Glancing over at Chosen, they pause. "What did you say to them?"
Chosen winces like they've rubbed salt in the wound, and refuses to elaborate.
"Great. You're a huge help," Victim growls.
They sit there in silence for a moment.
"Don't die fixing what I caused."
"...you think it's that bad?"
"Please." They say, and Vic sighs. "Promise."
"Okay. Whatever. Promise."
Chosen exhales.
Before Vic can ask any more questions, they blast off with a rush of flame.
They needed to talk. Eventually.
Eventually.
Instead of thinking about the painful, soul-bearing conversation everyone had to have, Vic steadies their grip on the handlebars, and steels themself as they enter the PC.
The first thing that hits their senses is the smell of burning metal.
They choke on smoke faster than they expect. In fact, the computer is filled with it. Shards of the taskbar explode in their peripheral.
Breathe, Mitsi's voice directs from their memories, but the air is so choked with smoke that they're not entirely sure it's a good idea. Instead, they begin to call out— before the ground rumbles beneath them.
The computer isn't fighting back in the way they remember. In fact, it seems largely inert as their world flips, and they are flung across the screen.
The scream that leaves their lungs isn't the voluntary one they planned on, but it's enough to get Dark's attention anyway. Dark's barrage stops, and the air is very still for a moment despite the crackling heat surrounding them as Dark lowers themself to the ground.
"I know what you're here to do. I'm not coming home."
Vic exhales a bit incredulously. "You can't stay here either. You know that."
"You don't even want me there," Dark spits, and Vic flinches— which, unfortunately, only seems to cement Dark's belief of this. "I'm right, aren't I? I'm just an inconvenience to you. Chosen doesn't want me. You don't want me. So I might as well leave."
"What about Noogai?"
"Oh, right, Noogai," they reply bitterly. "Of course YOU say that. You only care about him! Both of you!"
Oh.
"Dark, that's not..."
They try to reach out, but Dark swings first. "Don't touch me!"
It hits harder than either of them expects.
With the air knocked out of Victim's chest, whatever they were going to say it moot— instead, they just crash into the files of some stranger's computer, with a blow that they had not bothered to soften.
Their head is too busy spinning to notice how Dark recoils, or looks down at their own hands, before stiffening, looking down on them.
"Don't follow me."
It's not a request. It's not a question.
"Dark," they beg one last time, or try, but they're too weak to get the words out without whispering.
Dark turns, shooting off into the portal into the outernet.
Victim isn't able to stop them.
The desktop is shattered into smithereens. It never occurred to them how powerful Dark and Chosen were.
How devastatingly weak Victim was.
They scream. No one hears them, of course. But they scream anyway, maybe because no one can hear them this time.
They were helpless. To stop Noogai. To stop Dark.
To help either of them.
They stagger to their feet as the cursor twitches. To go home.
Alone.
—
Noogai has gotten worse than when they left.
Chosen, pleadingly almost, looks to Victim to be rewarded with good news. Their shoulders sag.
"Sorry," they whisper hoarsely. "It's all my fault."
"Damn right it is."
Victim expects to see some flare of anger, of the defiance they've come to known Chosen for. Instead they just sigh, soot swirling in the air with the heavy sigh.
They don't expect it to hit so hard. But it hits with a finality.
Dark is gone. And they are still here.
And Noogai was getting worse.
"Are you going to scold me?" Chosen asks, tone sardonic.
Vic shakes their head.
Instead, they lean into Chosen.
Chosen stiffens, at first.
Then, it loosens.
Chosen starts to quietly cry.
Vic doesn't let themself cry. Not yet. They needed to be the strong one. They were the oldest. Not by technicality, but the oldest nonetheless.
It would be a long time before they would ever let themself cry in front of Noogai, or Chosen.
Instead, they cry into Mitsi's arms quietly in a lonely room where no one else would hear them. Sometimes Agent's. Never, never in front of Noogai.
—
When Noogai wakes up again, he asks, of course.
"Where's Dark?"
Their mouth turns dry, and they give the only answer they can.
A sign of life— but Victim isn't letting anyone else go on computers. Not after what happened to them.
"We have something."
Victim perks up from the good news.
It has been a month since Dark was declared missing, and the stress is doing nothing good for any of their health. Especially not Noogai's.
For how stupid he could be, he was perceptive, and when he was actually applying himself to paying attention about something he cared about, especially so.
And he cared a lot about Dark.
(That wasn't to say Victim didn't care. Did they think Dark maybe would have been better off not existing? Maybe. Not that they said it to their face. But that didn't matter. Noogai had drawn them and that was that.)
"Tell me," they reply.
"There's been a pattern of skygrids going out recently," Agent told them, pulling up some videos from some of the workers out searching, and showing it to Victim. Indeed, the computers were sparking out, with explosive lights going across them like fireworks.
Victim recognized that fire all too well. It wasn't Chosen's, sure, but it was close enough that it had to be Dark.
Victim took in a slightly shaky breath.
Agent let his professional demeanor drop briefly, lowering his voice slightly. "Mitsi is right you know. You don't have to do this alone, Vic. There are people here willing to help, even if—"
"No," they reply sternly. "No. Computers are dangerous. Humans are dangerous. I'm not letting someone else get hurt just because I'm too much of a coward to go deal with this."
"Vic—"
"It's not an argument." Their chair grinds against the floor as they stand up, walking to the door "I'm doing this. Only me."
They could feel Agent's disapproving gaze boring into the back of their head, but they ignored it.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
The Hollowheads— and their stray human— are doing the best with what they have.
Sometimes, it's not enough.
Noogai wrapped his arms around himself. "It's not your problem."
"Not my problem," Victim grumbles, and he feels shame heat his face. "You always say that. You don't get to dictate what I concern myself with."
"But I'm not even that sick!"
"No buts. You're staying laying down."
Victim doesn't leave time for argument, holding up a hand and rushing out of the room. He frowned, slumping against the pillows that he had been using to prop himself upright while drawing, and scrawled another half-hearted doodle, this time of his old house. He wasn't any good at drawing structures, but it was something that, reliably, did not come alive.
He hadn't told Victim about that yet.
When he was real, it was pretty easy to guarantee none of his creations came to life. Now that he was part of the digital world— the 'outernet', as Vic had dubbed it (Noogai knew it was Newgrounds— he recognized some of the faces there. He never said anything. That would be weird. He was already weird enough as it was) he couldn't trust paper to not betray him.
It already had once.
The door opened, and Noogai snapped his notebook shut like he's been doing something wrong— not that Victim paid it much mind any more. They were both jumpy around each other, for better or for worse: they had quickly discovered yelling and accusations made things worse, and, with Chosen as anxious as they could be in the earlier days, sometimes ended up with a hole in the wall or a Victim-shaped dent. So for now— and with any luck, for the rest of forever, some part of him thinks, they don't talk about it. They don't talk about the way Victim cowers at things that don't exist. They don't talk about the way Noogai shies away whenever Vic makes any sudden movements, and they don't talk about how Chosen was created. They talk about the mission statement, sometimes. But they avoided talking about why it was there.
This, however, was before the rule about Dark.
Neither of them want to talk about that, though. So instead, he looks down at the pills that Victim is shoving in his face.
"Your corruption suppressants. You haven't taken them yet today."
Oh. He blinks. "I thought I ran out of those, I..."
"You could have asked for more. You know Mitsi and I have access to this medicine."
"I didn't want to bother you," he mumbled, taking the pills in his hands. That, and honestly, he had entirely forgotten to ask.
"You're going to get me killed for not helping you sooner when I didn't even know what was wrong," Victim replied. "And that is why I keep track."
The implication soured the teasing tone a little, and he looked away guiltily, swinging his legs and shrinking into the hoodie he'd been wearing to avoid looking at the damage to his body. "Have you found Dark yet?"
"No. No signs." They sighed. "Don't worry about Dark. I've got the best people there are on the job. If there is hair or head to be found of them, they'll make sure it's done."
"And... what if there isn't?"
Vic gives him an uncomfortable look— one that in their year together, he's learned means 'shut up before it turns into a fight.'
So he does.
The silence stretches on, uncomfortable and burdensome.
"I'll be back to check on you in a bit. Make sure you haven't gotten worse," they say cooly, in that calculated way they did before all hell tended to break loose as they got up. Still, they slowly move to stiffly pat him on the shoulder in whatever comfort they could offer. "Take a nap or something."
And like that, they were gone, leaving only the sinking feeling in his chest to accompany him to sleep.
—
It has been a week, two days, and five hours since The Dark Lord was declared missing.
Every second of it was driving Victim absolutely insane.
"What do you MEAN, you can't find them?"
"We just can't." The taskforce they'd come to know as Primal replied. Chosen for her keen eye and swift movements— and ability to dodge fire if truly necessary, although Vic had hoped it wouldn't come to that— she was a very, very good huntsman.
Agent (as they'd come to know him from Mitsi's teasing— they were pretty sure he had a different name but Mitsi had always called him Agent, and it felt awkward and overly formal calling him by his full name after that, so Agent it was) adjusted his glasses. "I might have theories on where they went. But you're not gonna be happy about it."
"Tell me."
The search team exchanged looks. "You said they could fly. Working theory is... they went up."
Victim's heart drops out of their stomach.
"No," they say softly.
"There aren't many people willing— or able— to follow them. But—"
"No. I'll go if we have to go on a computer."
"You don't have to," Mitsi says softly.
They give her a look.
They can't. She knows this. She gives HER look she gives when she thinks Vic is being stupid— or more accurately, ignoring something, maybe.
They turn to Agent. "See if you can track down their last location. Before they went up. If we can track them down..."
"This is insanely dangerous," Hazard says, ever the practical one.
"I don't care. It's my responsibility to protect them."
From humans goes unsaid. From themself, even moreso.
Still. The search team shuffles, uncomfortably looking to Mitsi, and, mercifully, she does not deny Victim this. She nods instead, and they all scurry off to work.
The room goes empty, except for her and Vic.
"You'll figure this out," She says gently, placing a hand on their back. "You're the most resourceful person I know."
"Resourceful isn't what the others need right now," they groan, and Mitsi doesn't seem sure what to say to that at first.
actually remembering selkie!noogai and realizing that if vic and noogai were both cursors that maybe it'd be possible they wouldn't immediately kill each other
noogai and dark have nothing actually against each other i think but victim and chosen didn't really like dark and aren't exactly happy they were created initially. things only get worse when noogai is in the hospital after the minecraft incident because everyone is stressed and chosen and dark end up getting into a really bad fight that might even end up destructive to their surroundings... by the time noogai is back home dark has already run off
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