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#SamLives - Chapter 15

“Marble Theory”

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Chase came to a slow stop behind the pair, and when he caught sight of the Skype call, he grinned. He strolled over and leaned down to get into the video frame, propping his elbows on the back of Jack and Mark’s chairs and smiling between their tense faces, oblivious to it all.

“Sup bro! You’re MatPat, yeah?”

Matt had gone very still, his eyes wide as saucers and his mouth hanging open in a search for words that, Jack had a feeling, would never come. His expression was familiar to the Irishman...in that it was very, very similar to the one he had worn when he had accidentally seen Sam for the first time.

“W-What–”

Jack sighed wearily and ran a hand through his hair, slouching back in his seat.

“Chase,” he mumbled, almost apologetically for Matt’s sake, “this is Matt. Matt...this is...part of that ‘Serious Shit’ we need to talk about.”

Matt dropped his Diet Coke.

The Skype call fell silent for a long moment.

Mark managed to draw Chase into a sheepish state of quiet with an exasperated look and a huff, Sam curled closer into Jack’s shoulder from the tension in the room alone, and Jack waited with baited breath to see how Matt would react once he was free from his shocked, stunned stupor. None of them had to wait long.

“What?!” Matt demanded, both hands clutching at his hair. His voice had gone high and squeaky, and semi-hysterical laughter bubbled past his lips. “Wait - what?! That’s - he’s–”

Then he was grinning, excited, baffled joy lighting up his entire being. His exhaustion from before seemed to vanish behind utter glee.

“He’s alive, yeah,” Jack nodded, starting to smile himself. Chase fell back into a cocky grin and dragged a chair around the table, straddling it backwards and leaning forward between the YouTubers again to keep himself in the conversation.

“He looks just like you.” Matt sounded in awe. “But how–”

“Probably the same reason as Sam and Tim,” Mark supplied. “I’ve got a theory about belief playing a huge part in this, and though I’m not sure how to prove it, it’s the best one we’ve got so far.”

“Tim…?”

“Tiny Box Tim.”

Sam perked up at the name. He nodded happily and swooped into the air, doing a little loop and darting out of the room...perhaps in search of his newfound friend.

“That’s...your channel mascot, right?” Matt hazarded, looking almost uncertain, and Mark shrugged.

“Essentially. Or, he used to be. Not so much now-a-days, but that’s for his own safety more than anything else.”

Jack blinked. Oh. That...made sense, actually. He’d been vaguely aware - if not actively so - that Mark hadn’t really mentioned Tim recently on his channel, but it wasn’t as if he had known Tim was real until recently either.

“So–” Matt stooped out of frame, reappearing with the fallen Diet Coke in his grip and toying with the bottle between his hands. He ran a hand through his hair a few times, puzzling something out, then he spoke again. “So. Okay. So. Sam and Tim are real. And now...Chase, was it…?”

“Yeah bro. Chase Brody.” Chase gave Matt a tiny two-fingered wave with a proud little smirk.

“Chase Brody,” Matt nodded in thanks. “And now Chase is real. So that’s three characters that have come to life, right? And supposedly, if Mark is to be believed then – what?”

He trailed off with a question at the look Mark and Jack were exchanging on the other side of the camera. A strain had appeared behind their eyes, a tightness in their expressions, and Chase seemed to have turned a little grim as well. His jaw had gone tight and he looked away, tossing a half-glance over his shoulder toward the door.

“It’s not three, man,” Chase muttered. He tossed a glance to the camera before rising from his chair, crossing to the kitchen doorway and leaning out of the room with one hand on the doorframe. “Yo, Hen! Henrik!” He huffed and took a deep breath, shouting louder. “HENRIK–”

“VHAT?!” Henrik’s German accent came from somewhere in the apartment, distant and muffled by the walls between the two men. "Just text me, don't shout like a verdammt hooligan–"

"Phone's charging," Chase shot back. "Get in the kitchen. Skype call. Important shit."

"Sheisse–" There was muffled grumbling in the distance, then– "Pants?"

Chase glanced down, and from his seat Jack could see Chase's shoulders sag at the sight of his utter lack of anything more than boxers on his legs. Whether it was in sheepish embarrassment or annoyance that he had to wear real pants, Jack couldn't be sure.

"...would you be pissed if I said no?" Chase called back. Henrik swore from somewhere down the hall.

"Idiot. Every damn time you get on a video call…”

“Another one of your characters, I presume?”

Jack and Mark both refocused on the computer screen at Matt’s voice, and Jack chuckled weakly.

“Yeah...Dr. Henrik von Schneeplestein. German doctor.”

“Huh.” Matt unscrewed the lid of his Coke slowly, just in case it exploded in his face, and - when it thankfully didn’t - brought the bottle to his lips as he asked his next question. “And are they always like this?”

Behind them, Henrik had finally appeared in gray slacks and a black turtleneck to shove a pair of wrinkled jeans at Chase’s chest, the two of them bickering in low tones all the while. Like an old married couple, or a couple of teenage boys. Like brothers. Like best friends, if Chase’s mirthful smirk and Henrik’s eye-rolling chuckle was anything to go by.

“You’re askin’ the wrong guy, man,” Jack shrugged. “Sure, I created ‘em, but that doesn’t mean I ever wrote ‘em in the same scenes together. This is – well.” He looked to Mark, who quirked an eyebrow at him. “...well I mean you’ve been more creative wit’ your Egos’ interactions, Mark. I’ve yet ta put mine in the same room. This is the first time I’ve seen ‘em talk to each other at all.”

“Trust me,” Mark’s expression darkened a fraction. “I’d much rather be seeing my Egos talking like yours are right now. Seeing the two of them together last night, discussing whether or not I should be left alone…” He shuddered and his shoulders tensed.

“So...more than three,” Matt concluded, and for the first time his expression was beginning to take on some of the tension the rest of the call’s participants had been carrying since the beginning.

“More like seven if you’re counting the kids,” Chase confirmed, appearing over Jack’s shoulder. He was tugging a pair of jeans onto his legs, fighting with the zipper while Henrik began making himself a cup of coffee in the background.

“Und by ‘kids’ you mean Sam and Tim, ja?” he asked, to which Chase nodded.

“Seven–” Matt let out a slow breath and slouched back on his couch, eyes unfocussed as thoughts raced through his mind. One hand was running haphazardly through his hair while the other continued to toy with the lid of his Coke bottle.

“Yeah, seven,” Mark agreed. Then… “So far.”

Jack winced, and Chase and Henrik exchanged tense looks behind him. So far. It was a thought they had been avoiding, but all the same, it was one that had crossed everyone’s mind. So far . ‘So far’ implied ‘More to come’. It implied that Darkiplier, Antisepticeye, and Googleplier would not be the last of the darker Egos to appear...but at the same time it offered some hope that characters like Jackie and Marvin and maybe Dr. Iplier may be willing to step in and help…if they showed up, that is.

“You do realize how...how...earth shattering this entire concept is, don’t you?”

Matt’s gaze was still distant, unfocussed, his head resting back against the couch cushions and his eyes aimed somewhere near the ceiling. The gray bottle cap from his Coke bottle rolled between his fingers, clicking quietly against his wedding ring every so often. Jack could see the gears turning in the theorist’s brain, could tell even through the screen that this was a lot for Matt to wrap his head around.

“Nooo,” Jack drawled sarcastically, and one of his hands came up to itch at the side of his bruised neck. “Bein’ attacked and almost killed by my own doppelganger, twice, definitely didn’t blow my fuckin’ mind.”

Mark rolled his eyes and elbowed his best friend in the side. Matt’s head jerked up off the couch and he went bug-eyed, shock and concern flooding his features, and in that exact moment two individual voices chimed in.

“What?!”

One was Matt.

The other was Robin...who had entered the call just in time to catch Jack’s last comment.

“Wait, I’m sorry,” Robin’s brow furrowed. He shifted in his seat - in his recording room, it seemed, which is where Jack would have been too had his fear of most technology (and memories in that room) not stopped him from setting foot in there a few hours beforehand - and levelled both Jack and Mark with a questioning look.

“I knew about the stream. I saw that one. What do you mean twice?”

Jack’s hand stilled against his neck and he blinked at the new arrival, looking a little sheepish and more than a little tense. He had texted Robin to give him a head’s up about Chase and Henrik being on the call. But he hadn’t really explained–

Twice. The first had been horrible...and the second was still so very fresh in his mind. Last night. Last night, in his sitting room, one room away. Last night and sharpened knives and glowing strings and a hand at his throat and–

Mark tapped Jack’s leg lightly, trying to wordlessly catch the other’s eye. The Irishman swallowed and snatched his hand away from where it remained by his throat, tossing a weary smile in his friend’s direction. He nodded minutely in thanks.

“After…” The word came out hoarse and Jack cleared his throat with a wince. “–after our call sort of...dropped last night, A– er...the...the glitch , showed up again. It...er…” He broke off, unsure how to explain what had happened in words that wouldn’t make him want to throw up.

Robin muttered a curse under his breath and Matt took a long swig from his Diet Coke.

“Jack, you’re still recovering, mein friend,” Henrik cut in. He stepped up behind Jack with his turtleneck sleeves rolled up to the elbow, leaning down to get a look at the bruising on Jack’s neck. “I can tell zhem about last night, ja? Perhaps Mark can fill in ze things I’ve missed.” He caught Chase’s attention and nodded to the stove. “Could you make him some tea?”

Chase, who had finally managed to fasten his jeans, nodded without a single comeback and started rifling through Jack’s cupboards in search of what he needed.

“Holy crap, you weren’t kidding…” Robin spoke again, his eyes wide and curious, watching Henrik and Chase on his screen and looking much like he was trying to convince himself this wasn’t just high quality video doctoring. “That’s Chase and Schneeplestein...seriously, you could be triplets. Are they all real now?”

“No.”

“Yes.”

The former was Jack. The latter was Henrik. Jack’s gaze snapped to him.

“Yes? What d’you mean, yes ?”

Every YouTuber in the conversation pinned Henrik with a look, each lingering somewhere between avid curiosity and a sharp demand for clarification. The doctor took that as his cue to pull up a chair. He quirked an eyebrow at the assembled audience and settled into his seat, folding his hands neatly in his lap.

“Perhaps ve ought to vait for ze final member of this conversation to arrive before charging ahead vith new information. Yes?”

“Okay, no, I get that part,” Matt cut Chase off in the middle of his re-retelling of the Nerf-vs-Knife battle he’d had against Anti. “Mind-controlling ‘puppet strings’ aren’t so impossible. There are plenty of cases in nature where living creatures can manipulate the thought processes of others, or even sedate their victims.”

Chase raised an eyebrow at the theorist.

“...we learn a lot of weird scientific facts while researching for our theory videos.”

Chase nodded with a quiet “huh”. It made sense.

“No, what I’m trying to figure out is how a living being can be both solid tissue and an entity with the capacity to separate into smaller pieces at will. You said Anti’s head exploded when you shot him?”

“Pretty much, yeah,” Chase shrugged. “I mean it like - flew apart into tiny flashing specs and then came back together. As far as I’ve been able to figure out, he’s not fully solid most of the time. I mean, dude, he literally appears out of the shadows. He’s like a digital ghost.”

“Digital…” Matt drummed his fingers against the half-empty Diet Coke bottle in his grip, a thoughtful expression on his face.

They had been discussing the recent chaos for almost an hour. Once Amy had arrived on the Skype call, and after she had checked and double-checked to make sure Mark was alright, Mark had jumped right into explaining what they knew so far. They had shared a link to the ending clip from Jack’s stream in the chat so Matt could watch it himself (Jack rightfully refused to relive that particular memory in detail again) and between Mark, Henrik, and - now - Chase, they were just about finished with their retelling of the past few weeks’ events. Technically, they had only recapped everything up until the post-battle discussion that had taken place after Anti and the others had left, but Matt had become somewhat fixated on how Anti functioned and had asked Chase for more details about the fight that had occurred.

“Pixels,” Jack chimed in. “The flashing specs? I thought they looked like pixels.”

The Irishman was nursing a warm mug of tea and doing very little talking, doctor’s orders. He and Mark still sat splitting center before the camera, and Chase was perched on his backwards seat behind and between the pair. Henrik had taken up a spot just behind Jack’s other shoulder, making for a slightly cramped but still visible seating arrangement.

Jack’s knee bounced incessantly throughout the discussion, his sneaker squeaking quietly against the linoleum, and Sam had returned to his spot on Jack’s shoulder (much to Amy’s delight). Tim had joined them by this time as well, and the tiny box couldn’t seem to decide between cuddling up in Mark’s lap and playing on the table with the small pile of tiny trinkets he’d apparently been collecting from various nooks and crannies in Jack’s apartment.

“Pixels. Alright.” Matt made a note of it on the spiral bound notebook he’d gone to fetch near the beginning of the call. The once-empty page was already filled with scrawlings and he had long since started onto the back as well. “I’ll take some time to analyze that clip from the livestream later. I’m sure I could learn a lot about how he works if I take it at a frame-by-frame breakdown…”

“If you need more to work with, I can try and get something from Jackie,” Chase offered, his chin now resting on his folded arms on the back of his chair. “I mean the guy loves filming his fights, and he’s definitely had a few with the Glitch Bitch.”

“I’m not sure who Jackie is, but if he’s got something, I’ll gladly take a look.”

It took Jack’s brain a second to realize what Chase had said. Once he did, his head whipped around so fast he felt his neck pop and the bruises on his throat throbbed.

“Jackie – wait, Jackieboy Man?” he asked, massaging his neck and ignoring Henrik’s sharp warning look for being so careless. “I have some fuckin’ questions.”

“You think you have questions?” Mark asked rhetorically.

“Mark, did you tell them about that theory of yours yet?” Amy asked, drawing her boyfriend’s attention. “That ‘believing’ thing.”

“I told Jack,” Mark told her. He flashed her a grateful smile and a wink. God, he was glad to have her around. “It’s probably worth bringing up. Thanks Amy.”

“Believing?” Matt this time, curious as ever about this entire ordeal.

“The power of belief,” Mark nodded. He resettled in his chair, folding one leg over the other and propping his right ankle on the opposite knee. “Matt, you’re familiar with Bendy and the Ink Machine, right?”

Matt gave him a flat look.

“...okay, yeah, dumb question,” Mark agreed. “Anyway - well, I explained it in a lot more detail to Jack last week, but to stick to the basics...I have a theory that Sam, Tim, Anti, and the rest of the egos were brought to life based on the fan following they gained from the fanbases they belong to. It - it sounds a little far-fetched, I know. But in listening to some of the dialogue from Bendy , Joey Drew’s ramblings about ‘belief’ having more power than people know...it got me thinking. Because each character that has shown up, every single one, has appeared after some sort of hype and attention was built around their character on YouTube. Sam and Tim showed up first. Tim came to life a few weeks after I shared an animation with Tim’s introduction on my channel. Sam was the first to show up on Jack’s end. I started seeing signs of...well…” He stammered for a moment, his eyes going distant, and Jack had a feeling he knew exactly what Mark couldn’t quite say.

“You started seein’ signs of Darkiplier. Your dark alter ego.”

“...r-right.” Mark nodded sharply.

He was fisting his hands in his lap at this point, and though they were out of the camera’s view, Jack could see how white his knuckles were and how tightly he was clenching his hands together. Tim seemed to sense Mark’s discomfort and tumbled off the kitchen table and into the YouTuber’s lap.

With a weak smile, Mark forced his hands apart and let his familiar climb happily into his palms.

“...I started seeing signs of...him...after I posted my short film series centered around his creation. Anti showed up shortly after the ‘Sam Lives’ incident went viral. While Sam’s video didn’t have Anti in it, it still acted as a spark to set things off, seeing as there had been some fanbase buildup right before then because of that video you made with Anti and Henrik.” That one was directed at Jack, who nodded. “The only one that doesn’t make sense to me is Google.”

“Wait, what about Chase?” Jack murmured, eyebrows furrowed.

“The Nerf gun, dude,” Chase told him, patting Jack’s shoulder. “It might not have made it into all your uploads, but don’t think I didn’t notice that.” He proceeded to pop up on the rear legs of his chair, balancing there with a hand on each of the chairs in front of him.

“The Nerf gun?” Jack asked, looking lost.

Mark, on the other hand, looked far from confused, his expression almost bordering on guilt. Jack turned slightly in his seat to face his best friend and set the half-cool tea he’d been holding on the kitchen table, levelling Mark with a pointed look. He waited a moment, watching Mark stew silently. Then–

“Got somethin’ to share wit’ the class, Markimoo?”

Mark coughed, then shrugged, and Jack was sure he’d have folded his arms across his chest in defense if Tim wasn’t still sitting in his hands.

“Well, I mean…” he stumbled over his words. “...I mean I may have been using the Nerf gun. A lot. In videos.”

“No no, I know that bit,” Jack nodded. “Ye scared th’ shite out o’ me more times ‘n I can count with that one. If that damn gun hadn’t been a great distraction the other night, I’d be tellin’ you off fer bein’ so annoying with yer random trigger-happy moments in the recording room. Tell me what I don’t know.”

A beat. Then finally Mark stammered out:

“It wasn’t random, alright?” he admitted, rubbing a thumb gently against Tim’s cheek, earning a little rumble of happiness from the tiny box. “After watching your stream, and after you told me you’d been cutting out glitches from your recordings before sending them to Robin, I had a feeling it wouldn’t just stop after Anti visited you in fully-formed person. So I...sort of...tried to make sure he didn’t come back again. Not fully. I kept the Nerf gun with me, and any time I thought I saw glitches or shadows in the corner of the room I’d shoot at it. It worked like a charm, for a while anyway. I just cut out any of the parts of the recording that had real glitching before I sent it off to be edited.”

Jack’s expression went stiff and strained, his throat feeling oddly tight. The change in atmosphere happened in a matter of moments.

“He...he was there?” He asked, the words leaving him a hoarse whisper. “The whole time, he was there? He could have - he could have shown up, at any moment, he almost did ...but...what–”

“Breathe.” Henrik. The doctor’s hand squeezed Jack’s shoulder and Jack was quick to latch onto it, his eyes shuttering closed and his free hand clutching at the leg of his jeans. “Take a breath, ja? Slowly. Zhat’s it…” Jack forced himself to calm down, Mark’s shoulder bumping his in apologetic support on his other side. Henrik’s voice was calm and even in his ear all the while.

“Anti vouldn’t have been able to get in so easily, trust me. It takes a lot of effort to reach zhis side of ze Brink, no matter how powerful you are. Mark’s efforts were more zhan enough to keep him at bay vhile it lasted. Anti most likely vould have returned sooner if your good friend had not been here.”

“Whoa, what?!” Chase interrupted, the front legs of his chair slamming back to the ground loudly. “What the hell, Hen? What happened to calling it “The Edge”? It sounds way cooler man, and we had, like, a majority vote!”

“Two out of five is not ze majority,” Henrik rolled his eyes. “Und you forget zhat ve are not ze only ones who live beyond it.”

“In that case, we should count–”

“Even if you add Bing to your numbers, it still isn't the majority,” Henrik muttered. Chase opened his mouth again, but before he could even speak– “And your purple-clad, eyeshadow-vearing edgelord of an acquaintance doesn’t help your case either.”

It sounded, to Jack, as though this wasn’t a new argument...but he didn’t feel up to mentioning that aloud.

Mark mouthed the words ‘purple clad’ and ‘edgelord’ with a look of baffled confusion on his face before he landed on the more important tidbit from Henrik and Chase’s convo, and said–

“Bing?”

“Yeah man!” Chase grinned, punching Mark lightly in the shoulder and nodding. “Bing’s a hell of a guy! He’s taught some sick nasty tricks on that skateboard of his...though I gotta say he’s leaps and bounds better than I am.”

Another familiar name. First Jackie, now Bing...

“Why don’t we take a step back here?” Matt piped up, all eyes drawn to his little corner of the screen at his words. He got a little more comfortable, took a long drink from his Diet Coke, and clicked his pen a few times in thought. “So we’ve got a whole bunch of supposedly-fictional characters all coming to life, right?” He started listing it off. “We’ve got Mark’s theory about ‘belief’ playing a role in this. We have what seems to be a greater universe here that includes all of these characters interacting in a capacity that hasn’t been explored in your canon plots on YouTube, right?” Both Jack and Mark nodded to confirm his question. “Alright. And then we’ve got this Brink thing that The Medic over here brought up, which - based on its context - serves as the barrier between the world the ‘fictional’ characters live in and the world we’re in right now.”

“I can see vhy you vanted to bring him in on zhis,” Henrik muttered to Jack with an almost proud smirk on his face. Jack nodded. Matt was kind of brilliant at connecting dots that nobody else could see...and hopefully he could help both Jack and Mark find a solution for the whole “my evil alter ego is coming to kill me please help” situation once he understood what was going on.

“So I think the next thing we need to do is to question our local fictional friends,” Matt went on. “Chase and Henrik. Clearly we’ve seen - or some of us have seen - the things happening on this side of the screen. Or - this side of the Brink. Either. Or...maybe both.” Confusion crossed his face for the briefest of moments before he shook it off and went on: “But either way, I think we need to know what happens on your side of that wall. If there’s anything at all that could help us understand how this all works, that would be fantastic.”

“That’s what I’d like to know,” Robin agreed, and Amy nodded along with the others.

“I wanna know how we got from writing and filming a super fun murder mystery, to finding a creepy bad guy haunting our house,” she said. “Normally that’s not something most filmmakers are worried about, right?”

Amy looked rightfully uncomfortable, and Mark smiled consolingly through the screen.

“I’d imagine not, no.”

“Alright, well, if we’re getting questioned–” Chase interrupted abruptly, standing from his chair and stretching, “–then I think I’m gonna need a drink for this.”

“Chase–”

“Want one Jack?” Chase offered, ignoring the warning tone coming from the good doctor.

“Nah, I’m good,” Jack waved him off, reaching once more from his tea. “Knock yourself out man. But if you could grab the honey while you’re over there, I’ll buy you more Doritos, yeah?”

Henrik’s mutterings of ‘Jack, don’t–’ were lost beneath an exuberant cheer from Chase.

“Awe hell yeah, dude,” Chase agreed with a cheeky grin.

“Chase–!”

“It’s chill, Hen,” Chase rolled his eyes. “I’ll be back in a sec.”

He escaped to the fridge, and Jack couldn’t help but compare his expression and posture to that of a teenager who knew he was doing something wrong but didn’t seem to care. That, combined with Henrik’s muttering of choice swear words mixed with something German he couldn’t understand, and Jack made a firm mental note to ask about the argument later. What in the world was going on…? He knew his characters. He had created them, after all. What could he be missing here?

“To answer your question,” Henrik bit out, finally turning away from Chase to face the Skype call again, “I have existed since ze beginning, or at least zhat is how I remember it. From ze moment this Jack created me in my first video, I’ve been alive on my side of ze Brink. Vith each new character and addition of plot, my backstory has filled in. I know, at one point, I didn’t remember being very good friends with Chase. But zhen I just...did. Some things, I know, didn’t come about from your videos, Jack. Some things just...vere. Und vhile I cannot be sure, I believe ve are affected just as much by the fans who believe in us as ze person who created us in ze first place."

Jack was momentarily floored.

“Like how even though you started off as a joke character who was a horrible doctor, you clearly have full medical experience now,” he pointed out, and Henrik smirked.

“Yes. Like zhat. You didn’t write it at first, but ze fans did. Und zhen you began to believe it to.”

“Oh yeah, about that,” Chase added, his tone tight. “I know you didn’t know we were real yet...but can I just say fuck you for the backstory you gave me? Dark humor is great and all, but fuckin’ hell man…”

Guilt flooded him and Jack flinched, bowing his head and swallowing thickly. Yeah. Yeah, he probably deserved that.

“I’m sorry for that. If I’d known you all were real, you know I never would have–”

“Nah, of course not,” Chase shrugged. He was still a little bitter as he sipped at his beer (under Henrik’s salty glare) but he honestly didn’t seem to hold any hatred toward Jack. Almost as an afterthought, he tugged the small bottle of honey out of his back pocket and tossed it on the table in front of Jack. “You’re a good guy. But like I said. Fuck, dude.”

Chase raised his beer in a halfhearted ‘cheers’ and took another long swig.

“Ve can talk about it later, ja?” Henrik said. He seemed tense. Tense and uncomfortable, but all the same, he was staying on topic better than any of them. “To carry on...our stories and beings are comprised of a balance of what you, ze creator, share vith the vorld, und most likely vhat the viewers believe vhen they see those stories. Not that something vill suddenly make us disappear or change in a drastic vay. If for vhatever reason you vere to retcon a character and replace zhem or redesign zhem, I get ze feeling something new would come to life instead of the original character being changed.”

“Like that edgy-ass version of Dark, right?” Chase tossed in, and Mark choked on air.

“What? ”

“Ya know, the old Darkiplier. He’s not the real deal anymore, but hell, he still hangs. He’s mostly like an edgy teenage ghost-dude who sometimes hangs with Bing and Virg–”

“That being said,” Henrik spoke up over his friend, “ve can be affected by things in ze outside vorld. Like my gaining proper medical knowledge...or more recently, Chase gaining a Nerf gun zhat holds more power zhan it did before.”

“That shit ain’t a plastic toy anymore,” Chase agreed.

“I was gonna ask where the hell that came from,” Jack nodded. “My Nerf gun - the real Nerf gun - didn’t do a damn thing to...him. When he showed up.”

“Don’t you remember? There was a shit ton of fanart going around with me and a PMA gun. I was blasting positivity, bro. I dunno why but I guess somehow it stuck in the minds of the fanbase or something? Hell if I know.” Chase shrugged and smirked over his beer bottle. “But now I’ve got it, and it’s helped a hell of a lot with our Anti problem on our side of the Brink.” He blinked and his grin widened. “And yours too, come to think of it.”

Matt had been quietly jotting down everything as it was said, his head down and eyes sharp and focussed despite the late hour on his end. Amy, too, looked somewhat exhausted.

“Anything else you know about the Brink?” Matt asked, barely sparing a glance at the camera as he continued to write.

“It’s this wall, this force, that basically separates our world from yours,” Chase shrugged, swirling the bottle in his hands as he spoke. “I wouldn’t exactly say it’s solid but it sure does a good job of keeping things contained. It took a lot to break through when Hen and I saw that you were in danger, Jack.”

“Why just you?” Jack asked. He was toying with the flip cap of the honey bottle, had been for a few minutes now, the quiet clicking of the cap playing beneath the ongoing conversation around him. “Why aren’t Marvin or Jackie here, or JJ?”

“Zhere hasn’t been enough ‘belief’ or power to allow zhem ze strength required to cross over,” Henrik provided the answer. “Chase and I vere given enough recently to grant us zhat privilege. Normally vhat ve have right now vouldn’t be enough...but Anti has been making it far too easy to cross over recently.”

Henrik’s expression darkened, and Matt’s pen stilled on his notebook.

“How so?” the theorist asked, finally looking up from his notes.

The good doctor looked thoughtful for a moment.

“Vell - let me put it like zhis.” He shifted to the edge of his seat and leaned forward, looking over his glasses with his fingers steepled before him. “Say you have a sheet of paper and a marble. If you drop ze marble on ze paper, it vill not break through. It may bounce off, but it cannot rip ze page. Now - let’s say you poke a hole in the middle of the paper vith a pencil. Ze marble still cannot break through, but if you vanted to pour smaller beads onto the page, zhey vould be able to pass through the hole. The more times you pour beads on the paper, the weaker the paper gets from ze veight und ze pressure.

“Over time, you can add larger, heavier beads to vear it down, and maybe you can poke two or three more holes in ze page very close to ze first one...und perhaps, now, if you vere to drop that marble onto ze page...either ze hole has been worn away enough and gotten big enough to let the marble fall through, or ze marble might be heavy enough to break what little paper separates the four holes vhich now exist.”

The good doctor leaned back in his seat again, hands folded in his lap.

“Either vay, things can pass through zhat paper much more easily now. Anti has been punching too many holes in the page...and he’s been dragging others through to help push ze process along. It is much easier to cross over zhan it used to be. So really, if you vanted, it vould not take much for Jackie or ze rest to cross over. All zhey vould need is a little...nudge. A little more veight on their marble. A spark to add to zheir power.”

“A catalyst,” Matt realized, with a little nod. “Something to add fuel to the fire of the fanbase.”

Jack and Mark exchanged a look, understanding dawning in both of their expressions, and they could see the same look in the eyes of the others on the call.

“We’ve gotta fake a leak,” Jack grinned. “A plot leak.”

“We can’t do it on our channels though,” Mark pointed out, making Jack’s grin falter for a moment. “You know that the moment you post something, or I post something, the Evil Trio are gonna pop out of the wall to attack again.”

“I dunno,” Chase grinned, looking cocky as he set his now-empty beer bottle aside and reached for the second one he had stashed beneath his chair. “After what I did to Anti? I doubt he’s gonna be walking away easily after that.”

“Even so…” Henrik’s eyes burned sharply behind his glasses and he reached over to steal the second bottle from Chase’s hands, shutting the other man’s complaints down with a firm shake of his head and a look. “Drawing less attention to ourselves is preferred. Ja?”

“Why don’t I do it?” Matt offered. He shrugged. “I’ve already posted that video about Sam. I could send out a tweet that hints at a new theory related to the Egos–”

“No.” Amy had spoken up, shaking her head firmly. “Matt, I’m sure the boys would appreciate your help, but not like this.”

“What do you mean ‘not like this’?”

“You have a son to take care of and he’s not worth putting yourself in danger for. Is he?”

Jack let out a low whistle and Mark got a dopey smile on his face at Amy’s words.

“...you really picked a good one, Mark,” Matt conceded, a tired chuckle escaping him. He ran a hand through his hair and flashed a sheepish smile to the camera.

“Hell yeah I did,” Mark agreed. “Damn. You’re good.”

“What can I say? I’m a smart girl,” Amy grinned, giving him a tongue-in-teeth smile. “And that’s also why I won’t offer myself up as a sacrifice. Dark probably already knows who I am since he’s been in our house, and though I don’t see him coming back now that you’re there, I don’t want to give him reason to come after me when you’re not here to be my backup.”

“She’s so good,” Mark reiterated, his expression taking on a dreamy and dark-eyed look. Jack had to elbow his best friend to keep him from drooling all over the kitchen floor.

“Alright, so, now that we’ve basically narrowed it down to almost none of us,” Robin spoke up now, “why don’t I do it? Why don’t I let something slip on a stream?”

“What?” Jack asked, looking reluctant to agree. “But that’s–”

“–probably the smartest plan we have,” Mark finished for him. “Robin is already involved. He edits all your videos. So as long as we are still the ones editing everything weird out of things before we send them, it would come across as Robin talking about legitimate future content.”

“Oh absolutely,” Robin nodded. Jack looked like he wasn’t entirely happy with this plan. Robin kept talking, “And since we already had Ego content planned, if Anti or that Google guy happen to be snooping in, we already have texts and messages from weeks and weeks back talking about things we wanted to do.”

“Yeah, but…” Jack tried to come up with another reason that this wasn’t going to work. “...but you’re in Sweden.”

“And…?”

“And what if something happens and we can’t get to you?”

“Jack, Anti von’t be going after anyone unless zhis actually vorks,” Henrik pointed out. “And even zhen, it’s more likely he’d go after us. But on ze off chance zhat he does vant to take it out on our dear friend, by zhen Jackie and Marvin vill have arrived, in vhich case ve’ll have a magician and a superhero sitting in the room who can get us zhere much faster zhan a plane, train, or automobile.”

Jack fell silent at Henrik’s words, thinking. Matt continued to scribble in his notebook and Chase was still moping over having his beer taken away, but the rest waited silently for Jack to agree to what was arguably the best plan they had right now.

“...fine.”

“Good,” Robin smiled. “Now that I’m in the loop, I can feel useful for once and actually help with the crazy stuff you’ve been dealing with.”

“I appreciate that,” Jack acknowledged with a tense smile of his own. “But just - if anything happens, anythin’ at all , you call us. Okay?”

“Absolutely.”

“Great. Good. Okay.”

“Alright,” Mark nodded. “Are we good here? Anything else we need to go over?”

“All good on my end,” Matt raised his pen. “I’ll go over the stream footage, and whatever else Chase can get me from Jackie. If I can figure out something to help take Anti down a notch, I’ll let you know.”

“Thanks Matt,” Jack’s smile turned more genuine. He finally stopped fiddling with the honey bottle cap and set the plastic container aside. “We seriously appreciate it. Anything helps right now.”

“Of course! Happy to help.”

“Just take care of Ollie, okay?” Mark added. “With how cute he is, that kid’s gonna be spoiled for sure.”

“Spoiled rotten,” Matt agreed, a sparkle in his eyes.

“I’ll see if I can stream tonight to get the word out.” Robin this time. “The sooner the better.”

“Definitely,” said Jack.

With something that sort of, kind of, maybe-half-resembled a plan set in place, Robin and Matt left the call, leaving only Amy on the screen...and it was then that Jack made his friendly goodbye. He plucked Sam from his shoulder and tucked him into his hoodie pocket, grabbed the tea and honey from the table, and all but dragged a confused Chase from the room with Henrik following behind them, smirk set in place.

“What’s the big idea, bro?” Chase demanded, finally yanking his arm free from Jack’s grip once they reached the living room.

“What?” Jack smiled innocently behind his tea. “I just figured Mark an’ Amy would want some alone time ‘fore the call ended. He hasn’t seen her in almost a week, you know?”

Chase held up a finger to protest, paused, nodded slowly, and let out a dramatic sigh.

“Alright, alright, fine. You’re right.” He rolled his eyes and started off towards the guest room down the hall. “You still owe me a bag of Doritos!”

“I know!” He almost raised his voice to shout the words after the retreating back of his doppleganger, but thought better of it and took another sip of tea with a wince.

“Here...Jack…” Henrik stepped up to him, and though Jack hadn’t asked him to, the doc gently took the tea and set it aside, taking a moment to get a good look at Jack’s neck. “Let me go grab my medical bag. I may have something to help vith ze soreness.”

For not the first time, Jack was grateful that most of the characters he had created had friendly personalities and good hearts. Both Chase and Henrik felt like old friends whom he had just met...and though there wasn’t a word for that feeling specifically, he knew that if there was it would probably apply to Jackie and Marvin too, whenever he met them.

Jack smiled to himself. Yeah...he was pretty lucky. True, he had a demon of a doppelganger after him, and he'd already had two near-death experiences (which was two too many in his opinion) but even so...lucky. Definitely.

[A/N] - Hey all!

I know it's been a long time since I posted...a long......long...loooong time...but to be frank this chapter was much harder to write than I wanted it to be. I struggled with trying to write Robin and Amy (sorry if they're out of character!) and for some reason the words just would not come out the way I wanted them to. It's not my proudest chapter, but it's still an important one. So I hope that everything was explained in a way that made sense!

The Marble & Paper concept literally came to me as I was writing this thing, and I ended up really liking the metaphor. I've had the concept in my head of how the Brink and the Fictive world work for a long time, and I was pretty satisfied with the explanation given in this chapter. It's definitely going to come into play later...so I hope you paid attention. The next chapter will be much lighter and MUCH more fun! And as of last night, I've gotten a few pretty crazy ideas for how to direct the plot moving forward. Forgive me a mischievous chuckle, but it's gonna be a fun time... ;)

~ Pixie

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