Debugged
Chapter 1: Traditional Origin Story
This first, then ponies, then SSB. I just want to get this out of my head.
This is an Exterminatus Now fanfic, which is a crossover/parody of Sonic the Hedgehog and Warhammer 40K. If anyone finds a section called Exterminatus Now, let me know. And feel free to tell the crew, I have no forum accounts!
"Blanc! Get down here!"
Blanc trudged to the top of stairs, slamming shut his laptop as he went. His father held up a plain-cover book, waving it slightly.
"This had better not be what I think it is!"
"God's sake dad, it's just a book!" Blanc groaned and leaned against the wall.
"Don't give me that! This is the Holy Book of Gruss! You know we don't do that stuff!"
"You're a Fernexite dad! You aren't that damn different!"
"Don't you damn me young man!"
Blanc stomped downstairs and swiped the book from his father, making the servos in his father's arm whir. "I'll damn whoever I want! You don't own me, and I'll pledge allegiance to the damn Inquisition if I want!"
"Not if I have a say in your upbringing!"
"Well fuck you!"
Blanc stormed back upstairs, slamming his door behind him. There was a click as the lock hit home, followed by another as the more basic bolt moved into place. Blanc's father sighed.
"It's just a phase dear, he'll grow out of it."
Blanc's father, a rabbit who went by the name of the Gearmaster, turned to his wife. Half of her face had been covered with bionic replacements, along with the lower half of her torso. The Gearmaster sighed and trudged back into the kitchen. His left side, almost completely replaced with similar tech to his wife, scraped against the chair as he sat down.
"I know, but a three year phase."
The Gearmaster's wife, and Blanc's mother, who was most commonly known as virtual, walked over to her husband and hugged him.
"It's still a phase dear."
The Gearmaster sighed, pushing his wife gently away.
"But ever since that catastrophic summoning, all he's done is sit in his room reading religious texts and contribute to forums. That's not healthy for a young boy!"
"Gear, listen to me."
Virtual held her husband at arm's length.
"I have known you for twenty years. I have known your son, and my son remember, for nearly fifteen years. He is a good boy, and he will come right when he knows what's best. Trust me."
Gear sighed and hugged his wife.
"You're right. I'm sorry, I just worry about him. Fernex knows what he gets up to in there when he's angry..."
"Bugged. Always fucking bugged."
Blanc pulled the microscopic camera down from his light fitting, crushing it in his right hand. It had long been replaced with a three-fingered claw, and was useful for little more than holding things and breaking others. With his left hand he pushed the wires back into the socket, and spent a few minutes fixing the bulbs back into place.
"First the phone, then the computer, then the lights, and now they've done the lights again. It's like they think I'm a fucking idiot."
Grabbing the holy book he'd taken back earlier, he slumped back onto his bed, and opened it to the page he'd been on before.
Most people would call it nerdy. Or obsessive. For Blanc, it was an act of rebellion. Ever since he'd lost his hand to that... Thing... He'd been looking for a way to prove that his parents were in this wrong. Before he'd followed them, but since then...
Shoving the distracting thoughts to the back of his mind, Blanc began reading the Book of Gruss again.
Further proof he was obsessive – he was reading a copy written in binary. The extra time needed to translate the book kept him busy, and it was a good way of keeping your hand in-
Blanc stopped scribbling his translation. It was a typo, he was sure, but the section he'd translated just then was-
Staring at the page, Blanc translated what he'd read one more time, to make sure.
"And the herald of Grus bowed before his disciple, holding out his book.
'It is true, you have bested me. I know now that you have turned, but you shall have my book.'
But his disciple threw away the book, laughing. 'You old fool, already know all that you do, and have turned it to my God. For he is far greater than yours, and in His name I shall smite you down.'"
Blanc put down the book slowly, staring at the page.
"Dear gods..."
Even a few weeks after the incident, the event was weighing on his father's mind. To Gear's delight, the books Blanc was now reading were, at least, the various spellbooks that Fernexites read to get a basic idea of the topic, and even their main book, but he was still in his room.
As if on cue, Blanc walked down the stairs into the kitchen, holding a huge pile of books.
"Read them, not got what I'm after." The teen declared, dropping the books on the table. "Got any of older origin?"
"Older?"
Virtual looked up from her book, thinking hard.
"Well I think there's one in the attic, but you might have some trouble finding it."
"Don't worry, I'll find it."
"Fanfic, fanfic, fanfic – seriously, who would read OR write these? The handwriting is terrible!"
Blanc chucked aside his father's old attempts at writing stories, moving aside box after box of old decorations in his search for the mentioned book.
"Old research projects, one of my old drawings – still can't do much better... tatty book! This has got to be it! Nope, my bad, it's in Mobian, too young. Here we are! This one isn't!"
The, definitely old, book, was sadly written a language that Blanc didn't recognise.
His possessed computer, luckily, did.
"That's Echidnan, ain't it?"
"Echidnan? Where am I supposed to find a translator that does that?"
"I dunno? Google?"
"Google. Fat lot of good that'll do." Blanc muttered, "I need to write something."
"Then use a book."
Blanc gave the demon a pointed stared.
"Alright, alright, I get it! Just don't get out the soldering iron again!"
Long into the hours of the next morning, Blanc rubbed his eyes and slumped forward onto the table.
"You can run it now. I'm gonna... Get some sleep..."
That was how Virtual found him when she came in a few minutes later, fast asleep on the table. She smiled.
"Bless him, he really is his father's son."
She moved quietly out of the room, careful not to disturb him. She came back in a few minutes later, holding something. The demon in control of the computer noticed her just in time to turn the microphone on the computer off.
Blanc's awakening that morning was an airhorn, though he did get a coffee afterwards. And he had to go to school.
When he got back, the demon in the computer blipped.
"There you are! I've run the software to completion. It's come up with some weird stuff for where you put in the original words rather than where they were crossed out though."
Blanc looked over the text. The title jumped out at him, written far bigger than the rest of the text.
INVOCATIONS OF GRUSS
Blanc grinned. He'd be getting no sleep this night either by the looks of it.
