A/N: 100 themes challenge ~ 72. Mischief Managed

「Don't Fuck With My Cereal」

danisnotinteresting ・301 views ・1 minute ago

"Hello Internet," Dan whispered with a smirk, the camera an iPhone from a downwards angle on his lap, possibly like it was hidden underneath something. He was sat on the couch, shakily moving the phone around from one position to another for the perfect place to hide it. There was vibe to the video in only the first five seconds alone that whatever this was, is was cheeky and mischievous, as if he was a child staying up past his bed time.

"So..." He began seriously. "I have decided that as an adult human being with legally-given birth rights, I should have the liberty of getting to enjoy a freaking bowl of cinnamons whenever I freaking damn please. Mr. Most-God-Awful-Flatmate-In-The-World's-Existence-Throughout-Time-And-Space-Who-Doesn't-Even-Have-The-Acclamation-To-Be-Named has deprived me of that right... and I want justice."

"If you're wondering why I'm sat on the couch, flaunting my prestigious double chin from this amazing angle, well I'll tell you, my friend." The phone made an unnecessarily close up of his face, covering the whole frame, as Dan's voice turned dead serious in that ridiculous kind of way.

"For years now, The Cereal Problem™ has been a thing. My cereal gets stolen, eaten, digested, by someone who isn't me, and I'm at a loss as to what I should do about this issue."

Their was silence, the camera zoomed back out. "Until..." Dan raised his eyebrow mischievously, a look in his eyes that just screamed, 'I'm gonna do something really hilariously shitty to my friend for the lolz'. "I have found my revenge."

"Sit back, get popcorn, get get ya mum, get cereal because it's your god-given right, and watch the following."

A black background flashed for half a second with the words '#dontfuckwithmycereal in comic sans, before the shot was back to the apartment's living room, this time without the slightly pixelated phone camera quality, and instead on a tripod facing the back of the sofa, prominently the TV.

From the couch, Dan turned around to look at the camera, winking before quickly turning around once he heard footsteps enter the room from the hallway.

"Hey, tonight, I was thinking we could just watch Buffy or something." Dan said to Phil, who came setting two Ribenas down on the coffee table.

"Yeah, sound good." Phil mumbled, the two sounding softer than they would any other time when they were on camera. He flopped onto the sofa next to Dan, who covered a blanket between them.

There was a jump cut that had to be at least ten minutes later from the bar at the bottom of the Buffy episode, just as Dan unsuspectingly moved his phone out from the blanket. It seemed normal enough for someone to go on there phone while watching TV, but as his head turned ever to slightly to look at the camera again, his face showed a devious sly smile.

Suddenly the TV went black, both boys looking up straighter at the unexpected change.

"Did you turn it off?" Dan asked, looking a Phil almost too predictably. The other was oblivious.

"No, what hap–?"

A blaring alarm ripped from the speaker system, and a new, unsettling display appearing on the TV to accompany it. 'World-Wide Emergency Broadcast Warning in Process: This is not a Drill', it read in huge red letters, along with 7 other lines rephrasing the same thing, with the exception of various languages.

"What the fuck?" Dan sat up straight, only taking this eyes off the TV to look cautiously at Phil.

"Is this real?" Phil question, looking over at Dan for whatever conformation.

"I don't fucking know."

A lower frequency beep focused their attention back to the broadcast. It lasted for ten seconds, only to be replaced with the alarm from before with the added addition of an American man's voice.

"This message is being Internationally broadcasted from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration transmitting from the International Space Station currently orbiting planet Earth." Every line spoken was subtitled, then translated into other languages like before.

"What is this?"

"Shut up, what's it saying?"

"At 8:23 PM Eastern Standard Time, multiple known objects classified as comets, interplanetary debris, entered Earth's atmosphere and have collided into the Pacific Ocean 31 miles from the city of Miami and surrounding islands."

"That was only 20 minutes ago, right?" Phil said, more confused than typically frightened at the broadcast.

"Yeah, but I don't know why there's this message about it. Must've caused a pretty big tsunami, maybe?" Dan proposed.

"Then why are we hearing about it from an interrupted international broadcast?"

"Meteorologists from NASA bases located in various sectors around the world, and Scientific Astronomers inside the International Space Station have discovered a gravitational tear within an asteroid belt that is now in alignment to Earth due to proximity with the planet's magnetic pull."

"Are they serious? There's no way this is real, Dan."

Both of them were standing up now, the blanket had fallen to the ground. It looked cold, the scene held a lot of tension. The alarm still bleared, the man's voice carried on, the lack of all other sound was suspenseful.

Phil took a step back, coming out of a trance he didn't know he'd been in. "What actually is this?"

"I have no fucking clue!" Dan pressed, sounding frustrated like he didn't know how to cope with the situation himself.

"This can't be real, there's no way something like this is happening." He gestured to the TV, a tone similar to Dan's but slightly calmer.

"It is confirmed that the comet collision off of America's east coast is not disassociated with the immanent collision to Earth's surface commencing in the next 30 minutes. The following regions that will be affected by these events are to follow the instructions as followed. South-East Republic of Ireland containing Dublin, Cork, Waterford, Kilkenny, Kinsale, Wexford; Generalised regions of Wales containing Swansea, Cardiff, Newport..."

The list went on and on thoughout the UK, hitting all the areas within Eastern Ireland to...

"Southern England containing Birmingham, Bristol, Oxford, Bournemouth, Southhampton, Reading, Brighton, London..."

"Oh, my God." Phil stared at the screen, scrolling through place after place that was told they were going to be pulverised in the next 30 minutes. "What the hell is going on?"

Phil took a few steps towards the window that looked over the street, moving the curtains out of the way

"What's it look like outside?" Dan ask in a worriedly voice, though the face he made at the camera when Phil couldn't see him was anything but.

"Busy, like alway."

"For your own safety and the safety of your family, friends, and loved ones, please carry out the following instructions: Evacuate immediately. Seek underground shelter. Abandoned personal items regardless of value. Pack necessities such as medication, water, food, etc..."

"Okay, this is actually freaking me out." Phil looked back at the TV, then to Dan. From the camera angle, only the side of their faces could be seen, looking wide-eyed and alarmed. Dan remained frozen while Phil paced from the window back to the sofa.

The buzzing off his phone is what brought his feet to a halt, turning around to stare at it from the couch.

"It's Louise," Phil read out. "Oh, God."

He grabbed his phone from the sofa, putting to his ear and pressing his free hand to his forehead. "Louise, yeah I'm here. No, he's okay, Dan's here too." Phil said shakily. He was shaking.

Louise's muffled words came rushed over the phone, before she must've said something that made Phil put the phone to speaker so Dan could here her, too.

"You two should evaluate, like the message says." She told them firmly. She sounded less spooked by all this.

"Yeah but how, Louise? Where are we supposed to go? It's going to be crazy outside! What are we supposed to do, Dan? Seriously, Dan, listen!"

Phil had grabbed Dan's hand, and Dan was forced to come back to reality, looking directly at his friend. "...huh, what?"

"Dan, listen to me, what are we gonna do?!" His voice wasn't shouting, but it definitely wasn't what it was like in every other video. Frantic. Alarmed. Frightened.

Dan suddenly came too, dropping the hand that Phil had grabbed, stepping away just a bit. "Before we die, I need to tell you something."

"'D –' What? Are you serious right now?"

The silence was smothering.

"Phil..."

One beat.

"Phil..."

Two beats.

"...DON'T EAT MY FUCKING CEREAL!"

Silence.

The tension faded instantly and suddenly air horns and glass shattering sound effects filled the video, all while anything remotely trying to be serious melted off his face, and he laughed hysterically at the way Phil's face morphed from being shocked to being bright-tomato red and making screaming 'ouuhhh' sounds into his hands that covered his mouth once he realised.

"Oh, my fucking God, that was amazing!" Dan screamed, the camera switching to his iPhone's point of view to film Phil hiding his face with his hands then attempting to shrink into the couch.

"I hate you so much, Dan Howell!" He whined back, muffled by the cushion he was practically shouting into.

All while this was still going on, Louise was still on the line from the discarded phone on the coffee table. "I'm so sorry, Phil. Dan made me do it, it was all this idea! He made the recording, let the records know I had nothing to do with it!"

"Well, you deserved it after all the crimes you have committed! You're like a cereal killer!"

Disgustingly disappointing pun ignored, Phil turned his head from the Pillow of Shame and looked at Dan offendedly. "I eat your cereal every once in a while, and I'm made to think the world is going to end?!"

"It's just a prank bro!" Dan said with a poor American accent. "Chill our bro, it's just a pra– wait...'every once in a while'?"

The camera zoomed up on Phil from the sofa, showing his face half pressed against the pillow, half looking a Dan with no remorse.

"You disgust me."

The next jump cut showed both of them on the couch, Phil curled in on the side of the sofa and Dan holding the camera in front of them both.

"So, what did ya think of that, Philly? How much did you believe it?"

"I wasn't sure at the start. I thought it was a joke, but not from you. And then it was talking about all this scientific stuff that I didn't know about 'cause it sounded so scientific, so obviously I thought it was real!"

"Oh, Philly. Hopefully this fake near-death-experience will teach you the lesson you deserve and get you to stop stealing from me."

"Well, if there is one good thing about this, I'm glad the world isn't ending."

"That's true... for now." Dan winked, as the classic jump scare sound effect played.

"Okay, I'm done. End your YouTube video by yourself, mate."

As Phil walked out of the frame, the icons for their three channels appeared. "Well, fine! Be that way. Steal my cereal and abandoned me!... even though I did just make you think the world was ending... Oh, well!

"Subscribe to this channel and my main because all of my videos relate to death in one way or another, thumbs up this video because Dan should have justice for his cereal, and subscribe to Phil because he thought armageddon was upon us for about 5 minutes. Bye!"

「Things Get Spicy and Backfire in the Howell-Lester Household」
LessAmazingPhil ・301 views ・1 minute ago

"Hi, guys!" Phil beamed at the camera, holding the iPhone in front of him in one hand and waving his the other. "So... You may or may not have seen it already, but on Dan's side channel, he uploaded a video last week in which I got 'End of the World' pranked..." Phil pouted through the screen, kid booing sound effects playing beneath the audio.

"What a horrible person! Honestly, I was so scared. He made it look so real, and even got Lousie in on it! I'll never forgive you, Louise, either!" Phil exclaimed, walking with his the phone at eye-level height to the kitchen.

"Anyway, since Dan did that to me... I think it's time for Philly's revenge! Mwahahaha!" The filter switch to black and white, along with the ironic iMovie jump scare noise that really would have no one scared if it's life depended on it.

In a hushed voice, Phill added, "Technically he was the one to get revenge on me because I kept eating his cereal, so now it's like I'm getting revenge on someone who was getting revenge on me, but whatever! Dan deserves this!"

The iPhone now faced the kitchen, being propped up against something since Phil was standing the middle of the frame, no longer holding it. "Right, Dan's out right now, so I think it's time to put my plan into action! I ordered something called, 'Ghost Pepper Powder' online, which I'm guessing is just those really, really hot peppers crushed into a spice. What I'm gonna do with it is sprinkle the spice ever so slightly – or maybe a generous amount – into Dan's cereal, completely covering it."

"Now, you may be wondering why I'm choosing to, quote, 'eff with Dan's cereal', since it's the one thing he told me not to do – and the answer is reverse psychology. That's when you do the opposite of something you're supposed to do, right? ...Or making someone do the opposite of what you mean on purpose?" Phil looked confused for 0.4 seconds, because shrugging. "Oh, well. This is your payback, Dan!"

A time lapse of Phil pouring the powder into the box of cinnamons played, every now and then shaking the box to spread it though evenly.

"Okay, so I don't think it looks that obvious. You could probably see it float in milk, so it's a good thing we're out. I think he'd be able to see it if he knew it was there, but otherwise I think we're fine!" The cheering kids sound filled the video with Phil giving a thumbs up. Such lightheartedness for such a devious act.

"Right, so now all I need to do is set up a camera somewhere unsuspiciously and wait for Dan to come home and eat some cereal!"

A jump cut showed a change in position of the camera, more higher quality than before and a shift in the lighting. It was placed facing their table, where Dan had taken a seat with a bowl of what he didn't know was Phil's tampered-with surprise.

Everything was perfectly normal until it wasn't... Well, unexpectedly... positive for Dan at least. As soon as Dan took one look at the cereal in the spoon, he knew it wasn't just cereal. Dan's spoon clattered against the table as he examined the bowl.

The words, 'Where the prankee becomes the prankster' appeared across the screen, just as Dan's eyes locked onto the camera, only for the screen to zoom up on his smirking face that winked once before he had a plan already forming in his head.

"What the fuck," Dan muttered, pushing his chair away and standing up instantly from the table. "What. The. Fuck."

The sound of the clattering furniture and Dan's profanity alerted Phil into the room, off camera, who definitely hadn't been waiting in his room for this exact moment.

"What?" Phil asked, completely innocently.

"My mouth! It's like it burning! What the fuck!?" Dan shouted, throwing in less pronunciation to make it seem like his tongue was actually hurt and he couldn't speak.

"Oh yeah," Phil said as if remembering something vaguely significant. "I may have put ghost pepper spice into your cereal box because reverse psychology."

"What?!" Dan screamed, taking the glass of water next to him and draining it fully. Gotta commit to a performance, or what's the point in doing it, right? "Why the fuck would you do that?!"

"This is what you get, Dan is on fire, for making me believe I was going to get obliterated by meteors!" The screen switch to Phil's phone camera as he began waving it around Dan in triumph. "Wooo! Take that, Dani snot on fire."

Dan coughed, some of the water spilling from his mouth. "Phil, this is actually really painful. I feel like – " he coughed again, harsher. It made Phil jump back a tiny bit, seizing his crazy iPhone camera movements. "I feel like I can't breath."

"What?"

"I-I... I'm..." and suddenly the most dedicated performer of the century buckled his knees, letting his entire body weight bring him to the floor, now just a heap of 'unconscious' Dan on the living room ground.

"Oh, my God! Dan!" Phil shouted, eyes and voice and body language all terrified. He managed to run over to where Dan had faked his collapse and slightly shook the younger boy's body, clearly not know what do to if the world depended on it.

Before Phil could truly even begin to process what had happened, Dan's eyes cracked open and a laugh escaped his mouth that a neighbours would've heard.

"Wha – What?!"

Phil stammered, reeling back from Dan. The other boy didn't even stop laughing to speak. "Oh, my – God – Phil!" He cried in between literally 'rofl-ing' in real life and gasping for air. "That – was too – good. You just – shat yourself."

Phil was silent for a few seconds, or at least whatever amount of time it took for the human brain to process information in front of them. "Holy sh – are you actually kidding me right now? Are you serious?"

Dan, still looking like he was hysterically dying on the floor, nodded his head. "I just – pranked you with – your own prank!"

Phil moaned loudly into this hands that now covered his face. The sound was close to Dan's screaming and that said something. "I thought I just killed you, that's not a prank! Oh, my God."

"Oh, relax! I wasn't even fake dead for literally a second."

"Still, I hate you!"

"You hate me?"

"Yes!"

"You're unbelievable."

Blank screen.

「I'm now a d-bag prank youtuber?」
danisnotinteresting ・68 thousand live viewers・live streaming

"'How did you know it was a prank, Dan?' Because I could literally see the spice on the flakes, thats how." Dan answered like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "What did Phil say in the video, that I wouldn't be able to see it if I didn't look too closely? Well, Philip the Prank Lord, I noticed it instantly once I picked up the spoon. What a spork, honest guys."

Dan scanned the live comments with his eyes, not getting used to why the first 25% said the two prank videos were fake, the second 25% thought it was domestic abuse, the third 25% wanted more pranks and... well... the rest of that the chat just screamed, 'PHAN IS REAL!11!1' with no apparent context, which was something he was incredibly used to by now.

"Look, maybe some of y'all are right, and pretending to choke or pass out or die or whatever-the-fuck-I-did wasn't that funny, but I kept up the performance for literally five seconds, and Phil has no everlasting, long-term trauma from the incident. The only traumatising thing about that experience was the fact I had to throw out the box of cereal." Dan pouted, looking into the iPhone camera as if staring directly at the person responsible, to which he was non-verbally threatening.

His eye skimmed over the chat. "'Prank Phil right now' says Phanci Elena," Dan reads out, laughing at the controversy. "It's funny how half of the chat is scolding me for doing that to Phil, and the other half is wanting more."

Dan waits for the chat to update, reading the comments that fill the screen, then more comments to replace those and so on. "You know what, I think it's a great time to bring my score up to 3 on the 'Dan's Epic Scale of Prank', don't you think?"

He read off the instant replies, most of them actually excited to (a) see Phil in Dan's live show and (b) see Dan win the unofficially announced prank war.

"Okay, guys, it's happening." Dan smirked, moving from the couch to the hall way. He lowered his voice as he got closer to Phil's room. "He knows I'm live streaming right now, so I'm not sure how well this is gonna turn out."

Dan slowly opened the door, waiting... waiting... waiting...

One beat. Phil was at his desk.

Two beats. Dan crept inside.

Three beats. Dan was behind Phil's chair.

"BWAAAARRHHH!"

"Aaaehh!"

Phil had his hand over his heart, a petrified expressions before it melted away and was replaced with fed-up annoyance, despite his smiling.

"Say 'hi', Phil!"

"No... you're a horrible human being."

"It wasn't me this time. The people of the internet wanted me to prank you again."

"You've now pranked me three times in a row and that's not fair!" Phil sulked in his desk chair, arms crossing over his chest.

"That's because you suck at everything," Dan dragged out in a playful tone. "I'm just too good that this."

"No, it's because you're evil!"

Dan winked at the phone. "True."

"Now are you gonna do your live show in my room from the last twenty minutes, or will you please leave me to edit in peace? They can't have spoilers for upcoming videos."

"I'm going, I'm going..." Dan sighed exasperatedly, quickly getting out of Phil's ear shot to whisper the next thing to his live viewers. "Just one more prank, mostly for you guys." Another wink, and Dan went back closer to Phil. He sat of the edge of the bed, closest to the desk.

"Wait, before I go, I need to tell you something." Dan spoke in a softer, calmer voice. He switched the camera around to face the back of Phil in his chair.

"What's that?" Phil mused apathetically, not looking away from the computer screen.

"I'm pregnant."

"That's great, Dan."

"Thanks."

"Cool."

"You're the father, by the way."

"Figures... Wait that's problematic since biology is a thing and we've never done it."

"Phil, don't kill their fangirl and fanboy dreams."

"If anyone's dream is for two YouTubers on the internet to do inappropriate things together then, I'm sorry, but they need new ambitions."

"Everyone in the chat right now is coming up with new dreams for themselves because we apparently told them their life goal shouldn't be us having sex –"

"No, no, nope-ity, nope. Actually get out."

"Wait! Say 'bye', Philly!"

"...Bye... Now scram, you rat!"

Phil Lester (✓) AmazingPhil ● 10m

This is war Daniel.

Daniel Howell (✓) danielhowell ● 8m

AmazingPhil i like how you post that without any context. honestly i'll probs figure out how you're planing to get me back mate. you're such an adorable flop to actually succeed in effectively tricking your friend to the point where they'll actually believe it.

Phil Lester (✓) AmazingPhil ● 7m
Replying to danielhowell

;)

「Hello Internet 2.0」

AmazingPhil ・1.3 million views・10 hours ago

Agonising. The amount of time it took for Phil's head to fully come into frame from the left corner was agonising. The viewers knew it. YouTube knew it. He knew it... and the character-breaking smirk that slipped out just before the jump cut happened showed that that's exactly how he wanted it.

Perfectly agonising.

"Hi." Phil said with a such iconic salute it had morphed into the Phandom's meme.

And let the chaos unfold within an exactly replicated 2 minutes and 25 second video.

And the Phil watching the video back as it played on YouTube, a day later after filming, already tending in the first 10 hours, mirrored the same sly smile as he knew from Dan's scream erupting throughout the apartment, that whatever this war was and whatever it had become – he had won it.

Victorious in the most agonising of ways and he loved it.

"So, my name is Dan–"

"I'm moving the fuck out!"

Phil raised his eye brows, not even bothering to rid the smile carved into his annoyingly blissful face. "Is that so, Daniel?" He said to his flatmate, to which was storming into the lounge and taking the laptop from Phil's lap. He scrolled through the different parts of the video. It was a complete replication, with the additionally exaggeration on the partially painfully awkward parts of the original.

"This is public humiliation!" Dan screamed – yes, he was literally screaming right now –, with an alarming volume that Phil wondered if the police were on their way. "This can't be legal! I'm gonna sue you and I'm actually going to move the fuck out of his apartment right now!"

"I see..." Phil hummed, blissfully taking the laptop back from Dan's hands. "Don't you at least appreciate the effort I went to to perfectly recreate an iconic video in all of YouTube history?"

"No." Dan pouted, crossing his arms and sulking into the sofa. "I take it back. You're not an adorable flop, you're a mean cyber bully with no empathy for other people's mortifying pasts."

Phil sighed dramatically, teasingly playfulness in his voice. "Well, mate. I won your prank war, so bow before me, you peasant."

"Shut up," Dan said, though he ended up laughing as well. He grabbed Phil by the wrist, taking him into their bedroom and leaving the laptop behind, abandoning 'Hello Internet 2.0' on pause.

Trash of the Internet 4 hours ago
"How dan and phil probably broke up #64829"
Reply ● 208 ? ?

Hide replies replies ^

AmazingPhil (✓) 2 minutes ago
"¯\_(ツ)_/¯"
Reply ● 87 ? ?

Daniel Howell (✓) 2 minutes ago
"( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)"
Reply ● 103 ? ?

A/N

hehehehehhe... i'm done. i just really wanted to finish this and make it formatted as if someone was watching the videos. it was different to what i normal write, in the way (a) i don't write 3rd person POVs this limited and (b) I CAN'T WRITE HUMOUR FOR SHIT.

It was weird at the start because i just suddenly had this flow, like i couldn't stop writing and reminded me of the good old days when your writing didn't have the pressure to be it's absolute best and it was more fun than work. DON'T GET ME WRONG THOUGH, I loooveeee writing fan fiction and creating stories, but isn't it just different once you've done it for a couple years from now to when you first started?... nope just me?

Okay, so I hope you like my poor attempt at trying to be funny. :3

- CyanGalaxy