Even if you never return to this story, I'm blown away with what you made and grateful you shared it with us!! With the flavor of humor and tense moments it genuinely feels like it could be a canon continuation of the game. Best of luck in your creative endeavors <3
Thank you so much!!
Idk if I'll ever finish it, but the end plot is like this:
Buddy goes back to meet Filbo and almost tackles him in a hug before either of them have a chance to stumble over their words. His encounter with the Agent made him realize that he has the choice to trust Filbo, and though he was hurt and shaken deeply, he loves him and that love is worth saving. Filbo is beside himself. For someone who has always been a joke, a tag-along, a half wanted tool, to be revealed as a traitor to the only people who have really grown to love him, to stand on the edge of losing all of it and deserving the loss, it means everything that Buddy comes back for him. It's a validation of who Filbo hoped he was on the inside, which is someone who genuinely is trying their best to help and love, who might deserve to be helped and loved too. Wiggle, Gramble, Beffica, and Triff were all having their poker night when Buddy called Beff to see if she'd pick him up. They were on their way when Snorpy calls Beff in a panic- He implanted a tracker on Buddy (because they're bffs <3) and he knows Buddy is in trouble. He's been tracking him and he knows what it looks like on the screen when a grump is running. Buddy and Filbo's reunion is half interrupted by the agent, who almost catches them in the apartment. They're able to get out but get cornered in a lot.
Filbo gets to stand up for himself to the agent (I had this drafted out but it's been so long the details are fuzzy.) The agent makes a move to murder him, but Buddy jumps in and attacks the agent wild-animal style. The agent drops his gun in the scuffle. Buddy bites the guy and is horrified by the familiar sick feeling he gets when the Agent's disgustingly thick, abnormal blood fills his mouth. He pulls back, already gagging, and gets thrown down. The agent grins.
"Snaks can't eat snaks." The agents eyes are wide and his smile stretches across his face.
The Journalist's mind startles over what the Agent just said, his comprehension cut short by the gunshot and spray of thick, white, batter-like fluid that comes bursting out of the agent as he's shot. The agent's skin bubbles. His eyes roll wildly behind himself, body beginning to lose it's form as he turns in abject rage. He reaches a hand for Filbo, whose trembling paws are holding the smoking gun, but the agent only manages a jerking step forward. His body is moving, roiling, as if there are hundreds of rats squirming under his fur, trying to burst free. Wide white googly eyes erupt from his skin like blisters. The agent's howl is distorted, multi-tonal, and as he lunges towards Filbo, his flesh bubbles free and melts off like sugar from hot metal. His raw white bones tumble down into the squirming goo that had made up his body moments ago, and thousands of little black worms with eyes scatter into the dark. The skeleton is left behind. Filbo and Buddy are clinging to each other before they know it, absolutely cowed. A car door slams. Everyone in the car saw Filbo shoot the agent to save Buddy, saw what the agent was, and they can see the way they're holding each other now. There might be questions, might be anger, and there's definitely a lot of fear, but in the end everyone decides to trust and forgive. They saw what that agent was made out of. There might be more. They need each other more than ever.
(Secret Bonus Theory: The Snakolytes have been trying to make bugsnax/grumpus hybrids for two reasons: to be able to plant a new queen to control the island, and to make a new generation of grumps who might be immune to the parasitic nature of the snax. They want to create a new world, and that means feeding the old one to the island. Everyone who ended up on the island, the main cast of the game, were either someone the Snakolytes were trying to make disappear or they were some kind of unwitting hybrid being sent out to see if they'd have any luck becoming a new queen or integrating in with the snax. The Journalist can't eat the snaks because genetically he is too close to being a snak. He can be set on fire and frozen, he can get thrown off cliffs, he can subsist off of sauces... He's a snak. In my crazy headcanon, Clumby volunteered her own DNA and the Journalist was a test tube baby that the Snakolytes nudged along down his career path. Gramble was right too- The snaks are his kin. His family knew there was something wrong with him from the moment his mother carried him out of the hospital, and that was thanks to the Snakolytes. They have people everywhere. Maybe run background checks on your next midwife, Gramble fam.)
