Work Text:
MT stands upon a rocky cliff-side, his command staff at his right side. He is alone, and has been for months now.
This place is a long drive away from the city, accessible only by a single, poorly maintained road. Looking back into the distance, he can just barely make out the silhouette of Stick City’s tallest skyscrapers, the city as a whole a blur on the horizon next to a long stretch of mountains.
The cliffs he’s standing on have formed a strange concavity, encircling a portion of a grand sea. This relatively small slice spans the area of a full city block, and the sea stretches out far beyond this tiny piece of it. For a moment, he looks over the edge at the restless water below, watching as it crashes against the steep rock walls that hold it captive.
Surrounding this stretch of cliff is a dense forest – it’d been what he was searching for while driving out here, the greenery serving as a makeshift landmark that told him he was getting close to his destination. From this distance, he can hear a few quiet bird calls from the woods, though his focus has gone elsewhere now.
Curiously, there’s also a shed near the cliff-side. He doesn’t care to know if it is occupied. If someone wishes to interrupt his plans, he will deal with it then and there – not a moment sooner.
For now, his attention is directed upwards. There, beyond the clouds and even past what the naked eye can see, millions of monitors crowd together in multiple shades of blue to form the sky. Each of them forms a small subset of pixels, and none are individually distinguishable from ground level.
MT takes another step towards the edge of the cliff, ignoring the crashing waves below.
If what he read about those sky monitors is true, it should be possible to access a computer through one of them.
MT rolls his neck and stretches his legs, clutching the staff tightly in his fist.
This option is truly a last resort. An unproven theory that he only concocted after months without any leads on that video. A risky plan that requires breaking into unknown territory with unknown obstacles.
No one ever responded to his fliers, leaving him with no other choice.
He’s done waiting for help.
This is the new plan: he’ll climb up to one of those monitor screens and use the staff to break into it. Once he gains access to a desktop, he’ll get a copy of that icon somehow – either by finding an existing version or by summoning one with the power of the computer.
Only then can he finally destroy the game that ruined his life.
MT activates the staff, summoning a small stretch of cobblestone stairs. Cobblestone was the first thing he’d managed to generate with the staff, and he’d become quite adept at spawning this block and others like it in a number of patterns.
Quashing his nerves, he steps out onto the floating blocks and begins to climb towards the sky, spawning more and more blocks as he climbs higher and higher.
***
Sometime after Gold’s funeral, he began to imagine himself as a sphere made of glass. One that an artist had thrown into a furnace to be reformed, left to roast in the flames until he could be pulled apart like taffy.
This cruel artist – he thinks it is himself – pulls him out of the fire only to yank and twist the soft edges of his form into needles and spikes, uncaring that the frenzied work leaves broken shards all over the floor.
And he lets it happen – after all, what else can he do?
The final product resembles a frozen explosion, a sharp and threatening monstrosity that’s unsafe to approach from any angle.
***
No one has come to visit him since the last time he chased his old friend Burgundy off his front porch.
He won’t accept any sympathy – he doesn’t deserve it.
***
At this height, the air is getting thin, and MT struggles to breathe. He ignores his burning legs and keeps climbing, the individual monitors only barely starting to come into focus.
A fall from here would almost certainly be fatal.
***
Drawn to the end of his tether and stretched further still, the threads strained and snapped under the weight of his grief. His body – his life – was no longer his own, but another tool in his belt, pushed to the limit and then well past it.
He barely slept. He forgot to eat. He rarely left the house.
He didn’t live – he survived, and then only in service of his goal. He lost parts of himself he’d never get back, broken off and crushed underfoot as he fashioned himself into a blade pointed at a target.
His body had adapted, as well as it could. It learned the new routines he developed and settled into them. Waking early, going to bed late, getting up to work frantically in the dead of night on some half-crazed idea. Hunching over stacks of books or welding for hours on end, doing anything that might help make his goal achievable.
Burying every bit of grief, sadness and discomfort under a tidal wave of fury, all of it channeled back into serving this one purpose. His only purpose.
He doesn’t care what happens to him after it’s done.
***
Standing on top of the final step, MT reaches up to touch a screen labeled “Andrew’s Laptop” followed by a string of numbers. The screen is cold and feels like glass, but when he knocks against it, it doesn’t give an inch.
(He blinks, and he’s back in that booth again, desperately trying to destroy the wall keeping him away from his son.)
MT yells and smashes the staff against it, the weight changed in an instant to be as heavy as an anvil, smirking as the screen cracks under the force.
This time, he will not be denied.
***
If he hadn’t lost Gold, he’d be driving home from work right about now, ready to be home and thinking about what to make for dinner tonight. When he got home, his son would interrupt him a dozen times with questions about homework, requests for a certain meal or even just fun facts he’d learned recently, talking his ear off as he worked away. They’d eat dinner together and talk about their days, and usually they’d do something fun afterwards, like watch an action movie or play a classic board game together.
The house would be full of music and laughter and joy.
It had always been the best part of his day.
***
The house has been silent for a long time now.
***
Blue stands in front of the obsidian structure. He’s double and triple-checked its design, but no – this is exactly how the Nether portal looked when he and Green first found it more than a year ago. It’s in the same spot as before, and Blue has tried using a flint and steel to activate it just like the wiki suggests.
He’d even caved and told the others about his plans – they weren’t too thrilled to learn he’d been trying to sneak back into the Nether alone – but none of them could figure out what was wrong either. And something must have gone wrong.
Because no matter what they do, the portal won’t light.