O V E R C L O C K
Hello! Mod Seagrass here, posting another story for your viewing pleasure. Hope you enjoy! OVERCLOCK ( 2.9k ; hurt/comfort) In the former fic, I explored the details of the interaction between redstone and electricity/lightning. In Overclock, that power is taken to an extreme--with devastating consequences. TW: injury, electrocution, rather graphic description of pain
They’re all fighting their best. It’s just a skirmish battle, nothing special, but who would they be if they didn’t put 100% into each and every fight? Habituality is the enemy of creativity, Joe’s said, and they’re inclined to stick by what he says even if they are on different sides. He’s always been a smart man.
Speaking of Joe, the other’s hunched over someone’s body trying to heal the nasty after effects of electrocution. He’s sorry, he thinks. But in the words of Joe himself, All’s fair in love and war.
—
Doc had called Mumbo over, with a glint in his eyes, and for a second he panics: had he been found out? Had he been discovered, as the mole he was? It’s an entirely logical path to take, he thinks. After all, Doc’s a pretty scary guy when he’s mad; wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of that.
He can’t hurt Mumbo directly with his element, seeing as how Mumbo would just get powered up by the charge, but he’s got plenty of other teammates that could do whatever damage they wanted without repercussions—and considering the loyalty that they’ve got to their leader (not you not you not you), it wouldn’t be a fun time.
There’s a gentle shk-shk sound, and Mumbo picks his way over to see a stack of papers spread out on the table and a small stack of fireworks. “So, what’s all this for?” He’s relieved out of his mind that those are not his personal papers that somehow Doc had discovered.
“We’ve received intel that they’re going to hit on our southern border at around 20 ticks this night. Not too bad, from what I’ve heard, but still—a loss of a pet bird stings the same as the loss of a loved one.”
Mumbo had known that already, had been warned to stay out of this fight if he could. They didn’t want him getting accidentally hurt in a struggle, and risk outing himself. He’d been very, very careful to avoid taking pain medicine in any way when around team STAR, for fear of his mouth blabbering something the rest of him resolutely did not want to say, but accidents did happen—better to stay on the safe side.
“And we’re going to…?”
“We’re going to fight back, of course. Don’t want to get into another fight, but that’s how it is,” he says with a shrug. “Ready?”
Ah. Damn. “Where’s the others?”
“Don’t need ‘em, I think. I wouldn’t want to bother them, it’s better for them to get their sleep. And just between you and me, we both know you weren’t sleeping tonight anyways.”
His blood runs ice-cold. He couldn’t have, he was so careful—
“Lighten up, man. Meant nothing by it, just wanted to say that I’ve noticed you’re a light sleeper. Now, are we ready or not?”
He nods. Better get this over with. “Yeah, let me just grab my gear. I’ll be ready in a few.”
Tucking a notebook into his suit, Mumbo rushes to grab whatever he can. Emergency supplies, healing items, the like. Hopefully they wouldn’t hit as hard, since they knew him…
—
The moon’s rising high over the swamp, and all that she hears is the sound of crackling thunder striking down again and again. It’s just him and Doc, and he’s fallen easily into his role: provide defense to match Doc’s offense.
He knows that G-Team would have most likely more members than they did, but he couldn’t quite manage to see them, is all. Joe’s here, he knows; wouldn’t want to leave their main healer behind. Iskall’s here, obviously—of course they’d bring him to a damned swamp biome. He suspects Stress is here, he can hear a quiet shattering sound echoing every now and then. And Grian’s here too, giving him a panicked glance before taking off again to try to channel some power towards Mumbo to knock him off his feet.
A powerful group, to be sure. He was almost hoping that he and Doc would be beat quickly and they could go back to the base. Luck, it seemed, had other plans.
—
The tide of battle changes rapidly when Doc realizes the swamp water conducts electricity. So far he’s been directing it at various hermits, most often Grian (he whispers in an aside to Mumbo, take out the leader and you take the whole team out) but it’s been doing minimal damage and Doc’s not willing to use their trump card quite yet.
It’s understandable, then, how his eyes light up upon the crackle that rises from the earth when he slams his trident down in frustration. Eyes darting to the side, he asks a silent question: Do you see? Can you see the potential? Mumbo nods, torn. His team or victory.
Doc’s either too absorbed to notice the conflict, or just doesn’t care. He yells silent victory to the moon, and buries the trident into the earth with a shout: “Have fun!”
It takes a while for it to sink in, but Doc is steadfast. He’s clutching the trident between his hands so tight his knuckles are whitening, supercharging it up with thousands of volts at once and dear lord it’s terrifying to watch. It’s quickly becoming a beacon in the middle of the swamp, and G-Team draws out of the shadows, attracted by the light as moths to a flame.
He almost cries out a warning then, cries out that this will hurt bad. It’s fine for him, he thinks. It’s fine for him to get thousands of volts running through his body—it just recharges him, tips him over his natural limit and grants him a rush of almost unlimited power. For his team? It’ll be bad. Doc won’t hurt them seriously enough to be out of commission forever (for all his power, he’s not a harsh or cruel man), and he sees Joe as a silent sparrow perched in a birch tree, but the experience is still quite harrowing—and he’d prefer to spare his team that pain.
He pushes it down. Pushes down the cry on his lips, and taps Doc on the shoulder—should he take to the trees? Doc responds with a nod. Hit Grian while he’s down, he says in his eyes. Remember. It’s like a house of cards—one falls and they all fall with it. He doesn’t want to, but. They should understand.
He flees.
—
He’s sitting next to Joe, who’s checking him for any injuries and quietly tsk’ing over scratches from months ago. He misses him, he thinks. They’ll be “enemies” again in a second, but it’s nice to snatch moments like this where he can.
Mumbo knows what moment he’s waiting for. Could see it in Doc’s eyes as clear as anything. He’s waiting for Grian to land, to come face Doc in the swamp. Grian’s flight is limited, free as though he might seem, and it must run out eventually.
When Grian lands, knees bent, a picture of perfect poise, several things happen in rapid succession.
Joe tenses up next to him.
The rest of G-Team floods out of the relative safety of the boggy swampland, joining Grian in the water.
A ripple runs along the riverbank, heading for Doc. (Iskall’s a smart one, he thinks. Good man.)
Doc notices the ripple, bares his teeth in some semblance of a grin, and twists the trident.
And then.
And then, electricity lights up the night sky brighter than day.
It arcs and sweeps across the water, jumping and twisting and weaving around like it was almost eager to free itself.
It runs through the water, through the millions of particles of water, and strikes G-Team like star come down from the heavens.
It hits Iskall first. It hits him as he’s attempting to manipulate this biome further into their favor, it hits him underwater and hits him hard. When he comes back up (after a long time, too long, he thinks) he’s gasping and his body is sparking all over like he’s about to explode. The pain’s clear in his eyes, and he flees from the water, dragging himself out with a pained grimace and clenched teeth. One down.
The electricity snakes towards Stress next. She’s got a little more warning, not quite the brutal direct hit Iskall took, but she’s equally ineffective in the face of the combination of devastating power and the perfect medium to deliver it. Ice forms under her feet as she tries to freeze the water fast enough to stop the electricity and fast enough for her to get away, but the speed at which the electricity arrives—it shatters under her like glass. It frames her face in a strange halo for half a second before slamming her to the ground under its force, and she manages to gather her wits enough to stumble off the swamp, thin snow-melt ice under her; hands trembling and voice shaking as she calls a warning to Stay out of the water, for the love of god, (watch yourself watch yourself and maybe you won’t get hurt the way we did).
Joe’s watching, horrified, for half a second before he snaps out of his trance and sprints to them to do what he can. They’re healing up, slowly, and would probably try to get back into battle later—but that doesn’t matter now. What matters is Grian, and Doc standing across from him with the same grin carved into his face.
He’s in shock, Mumbo thinks. At how fast his team was taken out, at how they knew of the attack. It’s the split second of hesitation before he unfurls his wings to try to take off again that seals his fate.
Grian crouches down, ready to leap up, and a single tip of his wings skim the water. Doc twists the trident again, forcefully, and then. Blue lightning leaps up, eagerly waiting to consume and twist and burn whatever it can find. And it happens to find Grian’s wings dipped ever-so-slightly into the water.
There’s a charred scent in the air, and Grian’s eyes are blown wide open. He can see the moon. There’s a little sound, and then. He tips over, falling into the water. Doc hurriedly shuts off the power (that much all over his body would hurt him more than was necessary or recoverable, he thinks) and gestures, searching the trees with his eyes.
Joe’s got his hands tied with the other two, and Grian’s just lying there. Not able to get up, not able to take off, essentially dead in the water, he thinks in some sort of morbid humor. He doesn’t want to hurt Grian. Neither does Doc, he knows, but Mumbo’s got the barrier of his mole status to fight through every single time he looks to injure with intent. He takes a deep breath (sorry sorry sorry) and steps out behind Grian, about to thrust his hand forward and bring him down even further, when.
Stress shouts, “Go! Get up!” and sends a wave of ice through her scream to lift Grian in the air. It boosts him up, launches him into the air, and Grian shakes out his waterlogged, heavily injured wings in the brief time Stress bought him enough to gain a few feet into the air.
No! If he fights, they all fight, and I can’t have the battle continuing. I can’t risk it. (They can’t get hurt further by me and Doc.)
He justifies it that way in his head, justifies leaping up behind his figure silhouetted in the moonlight to deliver a blow with redstone he has ready to Grian’s head—hopefully enough to knock him out.
It’s at that moment Doc lets out a cry of anger, and sends a bolt streaking through the air above Grian’s head to force him to flinch out of the air. It’s at that moment he slams his trident in frustration into the water again. And it’s at that moment that Mumbo accidentally takes the strike meant for Grian, and slams into the water. The still charged water. The water which is currently overflowing with raw elemental power, and looking for an outlet.
He thinks he’s fine for the brief half second he sinks into the water, thinks he’ll be able to stand it as he’s done before and maybe even receive some sort of boost. Those thoughts are dispelled in the next instant.
—
Energy’s flowing through his body and out, circling and cycling through with no regard for the mortal vessel it’s being held in, and he thinks he understands what death is.
he feels the moon
the stars
the water, the sky, the universe, he thinks he tastes blood on his lips.
he can’t taste much of anything now, he thinks. he’s raw power, unfiltered, screaming to be let free to be let out to be uncaged
He thinks he forgot his name. Did he have one?
He’s the universe. He’s the starry night blinking out a message. He’s a signal, a beacon, every single message sent out in the universe, desperately seeking a response, it hurtsithurtsithurts
He’s just a mass of carbon of raw spacedust crumbling as the sky turns and the earth turns or maybe they’re one and the same and he’s just a dot in the universe
He’s falling apart the longer it goes on, he thinks. Or maybe he doesn’t. He can’t tell anymore, the difference between him and the ground and the water he can’t remember what he was doing
He thinks he hears screaming, from far beyond. From the edge of the world, maybe.
There’s too much power arcing through him, too much for him to handle, there’s no way to direct it because how can you direct the ocean? Without direction it’s unhinged, just passing through, using him as a train station, leaving pain and pain and pain in its wake.
Hey, something shouts. Hey, no, wake up, you’re not dying on my watch, d’you hear me? Wake up! Wake up! You have to wake up!
He wants to. Maybe. It’d hurt more if he opened his eyes, right? It’d be a lot easier to just give himself over to the raw power clearly looking to burn and consume anything in its wake. He can’t tell what he wants anymore.
I don’t care if it hurts! Wake UP! Joe, work faster, please, I swear I’m not trying to rush you but do you hear it? The stuff he’s saying?
He doesn’t know what’s happening. Should he be awake? He tries to pry his eyes (eyes?) open, and is immediately greeted with overwhelming pain. Everything is too much, too bright too dark too cold too hot and he can’t stand it, he thinks that the overload that had been streaming through his body would almost be preferable. “Oh, thank God, you’re finally awake.” Who…?
Joe looks up from his work to glare at Mumbo. He gives a small, tight-lipped shake of the head, speaking a thousand words in a gesture. Had G-Team lost then?
“Hey. Hey. Look at me. How many fingers am I holding up.” He’s starting to recognize faces and shapes again, which means he unfortunately has the displeasure of seeing Doc’s face looming over him. “I won’t hesitate to slap you awake again.”
He opens his mouth, hoping he hasn’t forgotten how to talk, and croaks out, “Four.”
“Good. You’re awake and coherent, that’s gotta count for something—right?” Doc’s voice lilts up in worry on the last phrase, and Mumbo wonders: what exactly…happened? “You don’t know?” Oh. He’d said it aloud.
Doc’s face tightens. “To put it in short terms, you took the bolt I aimed above Grian. I was supercharged, already had been from the power I took earlier, and when that combined with you, that hit hard. Hard enough to knock you out of the air. Normally, it would’ve been fine, I like to think.” Oh. Then what— “When you fell down into the water, you took the full force of the power I’d discharged into it. Remember, I slammed my trident into the water earlier? That had kept the water sparking, electricity looking for an outlet. And, well. You happened to be there when you did.”
“Why aren’t I dead, Doc?” He thought he had been, maybe. He didn’t know.
“I think you responded that way to my powers because of the unique way our elements interact. I don’t know. Don’t care, really,” he said. His voice was tight with some emotion—anger? It seemed they’d either lost or reached some sort of draw, seeing as how Joe was currently over at his side.
“Listen, I’m really very sorry for what happened, it was a simple mistake. I’ll work in the future to avoid clashing like that, sorry—” Mumbo gets cut off by Joe standing up.
“You should be stable. Take care of yourself, Mumbo,” he says, giving him another look. “No deaths on my watch.” Joe walks over to G-Team, where Stress and Iskall are supporting a limping Grian, and starts to take the trek back to their base.
Mumbo looks to break the awkward silence settling between them. “Anyways, yeah, like I said, sorry about all that—”
Doc leans over and grabs him in an even more awkward hug, then lets go in an instant.
“I, uh, —”
“Listen. I wasn't mad because we didn’t win the battle or whatever. I was worried, understand?”
Mumbo sits in silence.
“A good leader looks out for their team. Remember that. And, for what it’s worth? I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Thanks, Doc.”
“Let’s go back to base. Recuperate before the next battle.”