Written for the very recent PewDiePie fanfiction contest! Since the story (was too long and thus) didn't get selected, I thought that i'd post it here anyway. No romance, just good ol' horror and PewdieCry interaction.
"Hey wait, the door's open."
"Oh yeah, let's just go!"
"We could jus—"
"No no no, let's just go!"
"Why did yo—"
"Let's just go! Fuck those cubes, let's just go!"
"Wha? Why didn't you te—? I'm like? You stood here all along looking at that and not telling me—"
"Don't worry about it Pewds, don't worry about it!"
..
...
Don't… worry about it.
Cry came to, bolting upright and panting. He ran a hand through his hair, and clutched the fabric against his chest with the other as he tried to catch his breath. His heart was beating so fast that it ached. Felix, he thought to himself before lifting his head up to scan his surroundings.
Cry squinted his eyes to see through the darkness and panic crept up instantly. The man got up and blinked again, praying that he would somehow open his eyes and be back in his room, A.K sleeping where his foot was.
But he was still there in the nurse's room of Heavenly Host. The floorboards creaked, the smell of old medicine toxic to his nose, and...
"Fuuuuuck. OK, OK, OK, OK, no," Cry muttered, quietly opening the drawer that carried a pair of scissors which he remembered so clearly, and bolted for the door, leaving behind the eerie room with windows strung shut by long black hair.
For what seemed like a half-hour, he ran through hallways and corridors with the feeling of imminent death right on his tail. Out of sheer, dumb, curiosity, Cry even broke the first gamer rule.
"Don't look back. God, I should've known that. Now the path's changed," he said, somewhat less panicky than before. Oddly enough, there weren't any ghosts or axe-wielding enemies around. Not yet, at least. What was weird to him was his headset resting around his neck. Cry hadn't put it on because there was music playing from it, one that gave his surroundings the eerie ambience that most horror games was praised for. "Well, at least I get to go outside," he consoled himself, staring at the exit that was littered with the shoes of middle-schoolers, hoping that the door wasn't locked.
The fog that shrouded the street reminded the man of the terrors that lurked in Silent Hill. Cry swallowed thickly and hugged his torso to prevent it from shaking as his feet moved swiftly but quietly, manoeuvring himself around the dead that were walking in the night. He heard the erratic sounds of clickers, and saw the disturbing, unmoving figures of the faceless nurses of Silent Hill. One thing's for sure, it's not like in the games. Clutching onto the pair of scissors, he felt almost defenceless, naked even. Walking into a street infested with creatures and not having a gun was the worst feeling. There weren't even any dead bodies lying around for him to smear blood and intestines on his only clean shirt, and once the fog had cleared up, he saw them. Sniffing. Preying. Hungry.
"Nightmares," something he had wished he never uttered because now, the nearest one had heard him.
"Fuck fuck fuck FUCK! GOD DAMNIT IF THIS IS FUCKIN' DAYLIGHT THEN AT LEAST LET ME PARKOUR!" he cursed as he ran and grabbed onto the nearest fence before pulling himself up without much effort.
"Wait... WHOA! OK! THIS IS HAPPENING!" the man cried as an odd mix of thrill and fear coursed through his veins. Cry could hear the sick, squelching sounds that came from his rotting pursuers behind him, still hot on his tracks as he leapt from roof to roof, before finally miscalculating his footing.
Landing back-first on the ground, Cry's surroundings blurred, and there was a distinct, irritating ring in his ears. He could smell the foul enemy now, and wondered how much longer he had befo—
"CRY, GET UP!"
A gunshot.
"CRY! GET A GRIP MAN!"
Another. A curse, four shots, a string of Swedish vocabulary, the smell of kerosene, an ear splitting shriek.
Silence.
There was an odd jolt of pain that surged through his body before Cry bolted upright for the second time that day. It was like he was being injected with a huge dose of adrenaline and it didn't feel all that good.
"Whoa, take it easy there Cry. You'll get used to it. You nearly lost all your health from that fall there."
Dirty—blonde hair, surprisingly short, and that unmistakable neon green headset, "Pewds? Is that... is that really you?!"
Felix smiled and offered a hand towards his friend, one he hadn't seen in a long while, "Blonde, Swedish badass, in the flash."
"Flesh," Cry corrected.
"Whatever, man," Felix uttered, a nostalgic sense of embarrassment caused his cheeks to flush.
Cry gripped Felix's hand tight and stood up carefully. He was still a bit dizzy. "I'm not so sure about 'badass', man," he joked and Swedish man heard himself laugh for the first time in ages. The hearty from-the-gut laughter that gave him hiccups.
"Where the hell are we? Where... where have you been?! YouTube went nuts, you were on the news and everything!" Cry hadn't meant for the questions to come out so impatiently. It was like word vomit.
Felix laughed nervously and threw his shotgun backwards lightly. He saw the look on confusion on Cry's face when the shotgun disappeared completely and to be honest, it was amusing as hell. He reached for his rucksack and this time, an apple dropped out of nowhere onto the palm of his hand. "How long… has it been?" he asked. Felix had lost track of the days when his watch stopped working, and he couldn't bear to carve the numbers onto the walls anymore. It just made the afternoons longer, and the nights colder.
"About a year," Cry said quietly.
Felix tossed the fruit towards his friend, "Damn, it feels longer." He held out his palm below his rucksack again and another apple dropped out.
"You left YouTube to be a magician. Dude, that's fucking awesome," Cry circled around his friend but found no rucksack big enough to fit a bowl of fruit, let alone a whole shotgun. "Are you doing the thing in games where you store items in your 'inventory' and it disappears to thin air?" Cry asked, eyebrow raised.
Felix nodded, he liked how Cry caught things so quickly without questioning the logic of it all. He just accepted. It was one of the things he liked very much about the man.
"We're in a game?" he asked, taking a bite out of the apple.
"Not just any game, this is every game we ever played," Felix said in an oddly endearing manner. Cry looked up towards the sky, and back at his surroundings that were littered with crumbling buildings and debris. He could sort of understand why. But Felix was right. Nightmares from Daylight, creatures from Silent Hill, the school from Corpse Party. Just what else was in this… world?
"Hey, is there a glowing orange SIM icon above my head?" Cry asked, poking the air above him.
"Yeah, now that you mention it. Wait, do I have one too? Is mine blue!?" it was Felix's turn to poke around the air, excited. Cry nodded.
"Portals," they said in unison and burst out in laughter.
Throughout the night, they talked and caught up by the fire sipping cans of expired coffee that, surprisingly, didn't taste all that bad. As they heard zombies being buzzed to a crisp on an electric fence, Felix taught him how to use the 'screens' which showed their health, ammo, maps— things they'd normally see in games. Nothing new to a player, really. Then, there was also the chatbox.
"So you activate the screen and you swipe it to the side with your left hand. You'll see who's… subconscious you're connected to. At least, that's what I think it is, really. They can hear you but you can only see them typing in the chat. The objectives on your map are guided by them."
Cry waved his hands in the air, "Hold up, how'd you get the screen again?"
"You just… command it man," Felix commented with a judgemental tone in his voice and he tossed Stephano back into his inventory. He was glad he found his old 'friend' a few months back. Stephano may be an inanimate object, but he sure gave Felix a sense of security sometimes.
"Thanks, that's the best advice ever," Cry sulked and visualised himself hitting the 'start' button. True enough, a translucent screen appeared before him. Cry scrolled the string of panicky texts. He was connected to Markiplier.
"Hey, who're you connected to?" he asked, head resting on a knee and adjusting his headset around his neck. The ominous music had stopped.
Felix threw a pebble into the fire, "Marzia," he replied wistfully before a gentle smile pulled on his face, "She says hi by the way. Glad that there's finally someone to keep me company."
"Hey, don't worry about it. We got this."
The fire crackled, and the sound of sirens and Nightmares filled the air. There was a new wave coming and the timer on his screen read an hour before sunrise. Mark had set an objective for him, and Cry watched as his orange pin drop onto an area on his map. Not long after, a blue one dropped beside his too.
"Mark says this safe zone's not gonna last," the both of them stood up and collected things for their inventory, watching them disappear each time they tossed it behind them. "Fuck, I hate Nightmares."
Felix pulled out a katana from his rucksack, "I knew I kept this for some reason."
"Holy shit. Holy. Shit. Man, I love you," Cry expressed, delighted that he'd have the honour of killing his first wave armed with a badass katana. With a shotgun in his right, and a shiv on his left, Felix turned off the power and jumped off the fence with Cry tailing behind him, but not before he gave him another piece of advice.
"Oh yeah, keep your headset on. The music is automatic, so just like any other horror game, it'll warn us when shit's about to go down." Cry did as he was told and Felix pointed towards the little button on the side of his headset.
Upon pressing it, Felix whispered into his own, "I figured this might work, but I don't know how far it goes."
"Maybe within our circumference on the map?" he points out and Felix nodded in agreement. At least they could be connected if they were separated, so long as they stayed within the blinking circle.
It was great to finally not be alone again, but having Cry with him now scared Felix to the bone if he were at all honest with himself. For a whole year, he'd only had to worry about himself—if he died, it was his own fault, he could blame his own carelessness. But now, he had one of his best friends with him, and if anything were to happen to Cry… Felix didn't know what he'd do.
A good hour into their objective, forty kills and one rest stop later, they were about a kilometre from their destination. Walkers still swarmed the streets and sometimes, the duo even saw spores. Thankfully though, no clickers… yet. The fog had come back, closing off a large portion of their maps which left them to blindly seek out their objective.
That's when they lost each other for two minutes. And after two minutes, Cry heard the quiet shot of an arrow wedge itself through rotted flesh. The man ran in the direction of the sound and found his friend on the ground with clickers running towards him. Acting quickly, Cry grabbed a brick from his rucksack and chucked it towards the side to divert their attention. The music his headset ceased as he crept behind the clickers, and with one swift movement, beheaded both adversaries. Cry helped his friend up and took shelter under a tree, praying that they would stay hidden until he got Felix sorted out.
"Fuck, oh fuck. Please don't tell me you're bit," Cry pleaded, checking his inventory for a medkit.
"Jesus fucking… christ. It was a clicker. I didn't know getting… bit—" Felix squirmed, he felt cold sweat trickle down the sides of his face, "—would be this… painful."
Cry swiped Felix's screen, hands already trembling. The blood on his hands made him feel sick from fear. He could see the panicked typing from Mark on the side of his screen. "Shit, SHIT! OK, hold on man, there's an antizin somewhere right? RIGHT?"
Felix shook his head.
"No. No no no no. It'll be OK. It'll always be—"
Everything came to a standstill, and Cry's screen came on without command. It gave him two options:
Don't let him turn: Shoot Pewdiepie.
Try to save his life: Cut off Pewdiepie's arm.
Cry let out a ragged, painful breath. Eyes wide as he read the text over, and over, and over again.
"Fucking Telltale. I… can't…"
..
...
I can't possibly… choose.