A/N: New chapter, yay! :) Thanks to you guys for reviewing, its a big boost to *desire to write more*. Anywho, I don't own Homestuck, (though the OC's are unique). Speaking of which, who else is hyped for 4/13? Can't believe that it's all almost over. Well, I've taken enough of your time, I hope you enjoy.

Evan was sitting in his perch, warily gazing at the ever-increasing list of death-threats and other toxic language from Chester, that was rapidly filling up his pesterchum screen. Even when apoplectically furious, Chester still managed to use proper sentences and punctuation when describing how immature and irresponsible and horrible Evan's actions were. Though Evan was desperate for an excuse to flee the conversation, he did not lie. Chris was indeed, messaging the hell out of him.

Since the kleptomaniac was still conscious and capable of using pesterchum, Evan thought it was safe to assume that the faux surgery went well.

Evan was still in a state of self-aggrandizement about deleting the car. It was an accident. No really, it was. There were so many lawn-gnomes, and they were absolutely everywhere, so, to save time, Evan just started mashing "delete" as quickly as he could, while waving the cursor around like a metal detector. That, turned out to be a bad idea. The cursor flickered over the car, and, well, no more car.

On the bright side, Chester did always complain about how crappy the car was, and how for a multimillionaire, his Grandpappy always bought the cheapest and shittiest version of something he could find. So, perhaps now may be a good time to get an upgrade...

Deciding to stop procrastinating about answering Chris, and still keeping a wary eye on Chester's chat log, which was still filling up with death-threats, Evan opened up his pesterchum.

-EnragedExtremist [EE] began pestering incoporealCriticist [IC]-

EE: Yes Chris, I am here now, was the operation a success?

IC: errr... itstopped bleeding

IC: andit lookessown togethernow

IC: Iguess? Itshould be good...?

EE: Well, if its sanitized and no-longer bleeding, that's all we can ask for.

EE: Is your sburb done?

IC: Yep, readytosink up withyou :)

EE: Give me a bit more, ill fix things with Chester, then I can play with you.

IC: fixthings?

EE: Well, I...may...have deleted his car by accident...

IC: Deleted?Car? Likehiscar in-game isdeleted?

EE: No, his In. Real. Life. Car. Don't ask. Its a long story, easier just to show you

IC: Hisactuall car? Ohwow, hemust bepissed XD

EE: Yeah, he definitely is, still, I know him, he cools down really fast.

EE: See? He's already stopped spamming me death-threats.

IC: He sendsyoudeath-threats?Lucky. Iwish I gotdeath threats

EE: You are the most screwed up person I know.

IC: D'awww, thanks. Blamemy brotherhe's abad influence

EE: Ok then, anyway, Ill contact you when I'm ready, for now, I'm off to finish up with Chester, something tells me he's cooled off by now.

IC: okImgoing tolay downforabit, Ifeel woozy

EE: Don't do anything strenuous for a while, you probably lost a lot of blood. Anyway, see ya

-EnragedExtremist [EE] ceased pestering incoporealCriticist [IC]-

Evan closed his chat window with Chris, and opening up sburb again. He first noticed that Chester was sitting on the Cruxtruder, with his laptop out, blue ball-thing merrily floating around him.

Deciding to cut to the chase, Evan messaged him,

-EnragedExtremist [EE] began pestering InquisitoralLogician [IL]-

EE: Hey, umm... I wanted to apologize for the car, it was an accident and im sorry.

IL: ... Honestly. I was mainly pissed at you for being reckless with a thing we barely understand. Someone could have gotten hurt. Imagine accidentally deleting a person.

IL: Can you actually delete a living being? We'll need to get some...rats or something and test that.

IL: Anyway. The car itself is a piece of junk. Besides, it's probably insured.

IL: Grandpa had freaking HURRICANE INSURANCE on it. And we live hundreds of kilometers inland, so he probably had something or other that could be loosely twisted to cover magically disappearing cars.

IL: He always did love arguing with insurance agents.

EE: That's good, at least

EE: Hey, what were you doing on your laptop?

IL: Nothing.

EE:Are you sure it was "nothing"? ;)

IL: No.

EE: Hiding something, aren't we?

IL: No.

IL: Stop That.

EE: What?

IL: That tone. I can't actually hear it. But I still don't care for it.

EE: Okay fine, but still, are you?

IL: Nah. I was too busy death-threatening you, fiddling with the things, and dealing with that creeper who messaged me earlier.

EE: He contacted you again?

IL: ...yeah

EE: Hmmm...

IL: It's probably unimportant. Anyway. while you were being unhelpful and useless, I, Have noticed something.

EE: Stop being an ass and tell me already, what is it?

IL: The crystal...cylinder...thing that came out of the Cruxtruder. I viewed it's captchalogue card. And it has a... code? Or something on the back of it.

EE: Is that important?

IL: No other Item has a code on it's back, only this thing.

EE: Well, now what?

IL: I suppose you can start off by spawning in that thing you were going to place. The Punch-Design-X it was called...or something.

EE: How do you know what it's called? I never said it's name... :| Gotcha!

IL: Yes you did.

EE: Did I?

IL: Yeah. How else would I know what it's called? YOU are the one who can see me. Not vice-versa

EE: Ok then, so, I just put it down?

IL: Sure. TRY NOT TO DELETE ANYTHING ELSE please.

EE: *sigh* *eyeroll* Really?

-EnragedExtremist [EE] ceased pestering InquisitoralLogician [IL]-

Peeved, and mildly suspicious of Chester, Evan scrolled through the item lists, and found the Punch-DesignX. Selecting it, and noticing their grist counter plummet to zero, Evan moved it to a spare part of the lawn and plunked it down.

He took some mild joy in seeing Chester jump as the heavy device suddenly and silently appeared behind him.

The DesignX, itself, was a desk style apparatus with a...typewriter? Attached to it, and a rectangular slot on top. The slot had suspiciously similar dimensions to a captchalogue card...hmmm.

Glancing around the yard, Evan could see that the weird ball-thing continued to stalk Chester as he alternated between fiddling with the captchalogue card, and his laptop. Contrary to what Chester thought, the resolution on the screen wasn't as good as Evan would have liked. Thus, attempts to spy on Chester's monitor, led to being unable to make out anything. Also, the game lacked audio, other than that crappy music that seemed to be on an endless loop. So, eavesdropping on Chester was also out of the question.

Still, reasoned Evan. All his friend was up-to, was probably not significant. Chances were, that Chester just wanted to solve the mysteries of sburb first. Or some inane foolishness like that. Some times, Evan felt like the only normal one, among his friends.

It made him want to stab something.

Then, Evan noticed something...different from when he had last observed the yard... There, on the side of the Cruxtruder, the little monitors, they were no longer empty. They read 00:00:20:00, and they were counting down. Based on the placement of the digits, and how they changed per second, Evan surmised that the clock was a timer, that was counting down to... something. They currently had twenty minutes by the looks of it, before... something happened.

Whatever it was, Evan was hoping it was a bomb. Bombs were always guaranteed to liven up a situation. Nothing like the possibility of death to get the blood pumping.

Then, his pesterchum started beeping. Glancing back to Chester, Evan noticed that he was standing by the Punch-DesignX and had placed a captchalogue card inside the machine's slot. It seemed to fit well.

Relived at finally seeing progress, Evan answered Chester's message,

-EnragedExtremist [EE] began pestering InquisitoralLogician [IL]-

IL: Hey. I have made progress.

EE: I can see that, what are you doing?

IL: Well on a...whim. I took the card for the Crystal-thing and inserted it into the appropriately shaped DesignX hole.

IL: This has resulted in the card having holes punched in it.

EE: Is that bad? Is it broken now?

EE: You broke it and we cant continue, good job.

EE: *slow clapping*

IL: Be quiet. Anyway. That's what I first thought. But look. These holes are in a pattern. The machine did this on purpose.

IL: It almost resembles one of those punch-cards used in ancient computers and "clock in" boxes at job sites.

EE: Yeah, it looks kinda... uniform.

IL: Thing is, I don't know where to go from here.

EE: Should I look up a walkthrough?

IL: NO

IL: I mean... no, lets not.

EE: Ok then, well, what we could do, is, you see the totem lathe?

IL: Yes.

EE: Well, doesn't the holding clamps on it look like a perfect fit for the cylindrical Crystal-thing?

IL:... Yeah, it does. Ill go clamp it in... And we can... Lathe it? Or something?

-EnragedExtremist [EE] ceased pestering InquisitoralLogician [IL]-

Evan watched Chester walk over to the Totem Lathe and attempt to uncaptchalogue the Crystal-thing, fumbling around with his obtuse and stupid quiz modus. Then, he was struck with a sudden realization. The crystal. It was a cylinder... and, hypothetically, another name for a cylinder was a totem. Totem... Totem Lathe! It all made sense now to Evan, oh, Chester was going to be so jealous once he heard that Evan had cracked the game's secrets first.

He could see Chester had uncaptchalogued the totem and secured it inside the lathe. Then, instead of messing about with the control panel, like Evan would have done, to, you know, start lathing the totem. Chester instead took the totem's punched captchalogue card, and inserted it into a slot in the Lathe that Evan didn't even know was there.

Evan was mildly surprised, Chester seemed to know what he was doing. The fact that Chester also kept glancing worriedly at the Cruxtruder's timer also didn't elude Evan's gaze.

Chester was up to something, he knew, but, then again, the nerd was always plotting something. Like the one time in... two thousand and...eight? was it? Some time around then, anyway, when Chester implemented a new get-rich-quick scheme on the stock exchange... and caused a global recession and almost collapsed the U.S banks...Nice.

Thankfully, the economy bounced back, and some companies, namely Crocker-Crop, benefited by buying up bankrupt companies. Ah, glorious capitalism. If there was one thing Evan liked almost as much as America and Democracy it was Capitalism, a completely flawless and perfect system... And if anyone said otherwise, Evan would be more than happy to introduce their jugular to a box-cutter.

Realizing he was getting carried away again, Evan focused back to the matter at hand. The totem lathe spun up, and began to automatically carve the Crystal totem, sending shards everywhere, and forcing Chester to take cover behind the Cruxtruder.

Evan was stuck with a genius thought, perhaps, with Chester busy with his nerdy plots and schemes to unlock sburb's secrets before Evan... he would never anticipate Evan launching an attack on a... different front.

Long had Evan made threats about destroying Chester's Spess Rangers... maybe now was the time...

Sure, Chester would be mad. He'd be completely apoplectic. But he would thank Evan in the future. Those rangers and other lame crap that Chester was interested in was holding the kid back. There was a reason Chester complained about getting beat up all the time, and it wasn't his high grades. Those over-glorified action figures were a menace to Evan's friend's continued social life, and they would die this day.

As he was moving the cursor to delete the hated objects from existence, Chester messaged him. Drat, he was so close. Still, should respond, otherwise it may be suspicious. You win this round Spess Rangers, you may yet live this day.

-InquisitoralLogician [IL] began pestering EnragedExtremist [EE]-

IL: So. The totem lathe is finished. The card is destroyed. And we now have a... less cylindrical, crystal-thing to deal with.

EE: Totem.

IL: Excuse me?

EE: The crystal-thing is a totem, I figured it out. Take that. :)

IL: Hmmm... That makes sense. Good Job. Now. What to do with this totem.

EE: Not sure, can we carve it some more?

IL: I don't believe so. I hypothesize that the "punched" version of a card is akin to an "instruction manual" for the lathe. Thus in this case. The lathe followed directions and stopped.

EE: Mkay then. So now what?

IL: Is there anything else you can spawn?

EE: No, everything after the punch-designX has a vast price increase. It's pretty clear that the first four things we put down are in their own cheap price range.

IL: Well. I'll think on it some more. You can do that too. Or go chat with Chris. Or whatever.

EE: Say, the timer is getting pretty close to zero...

Evan smirked, such an innocent statement, the perfect bait. Time to see how Chester reacts.

IL: Yes. Right. The timer. I'm going to go off the assumption that 'zero' is nothing good and we should hurry up and make some progress before 'zero' hits.

That clever bastard, making a "we should hurry up" request, without actually revealing that he knew more than he was letting on...

EE: Okay, bye then, Ill go chat with Chris

IL: Alright. I shall speak to you again later.

-InquisitoralLogician [IL] ceased pestering EnragedExtremist [EE]-

Now then. Time to see what Chester gets upto when he thinks Evan is gone... After a minute, Chester went over to his laptop, and began messing around with it. After a few more minutes, he stood up, captchalogued the carved totem, and headed over to the Alchemeter.

AHA! So he was clearly using a walkthrough of some sort. Evan grinned, there was no need to let the cat out of the bag yet, let him think he was winning, but in the future... Chester could be knocked down a few pegs... yes, glorious.

Meanwhile though, may as well delete the Rangers while Chester was distracted.

Mousing over to Chester's room, Evan clicked on the cabinet where they were displayed...before realizing he had the 'move' cursor equipped. Thus, when he moved the mouse to change modes, the 'selected' cabinet, and everything on it followed the mouse. Through the wall. Into the backyard. Well, so much for subtlety.

Chester was in the process of uncaptchaloging the carved totem and puzzling over a hard question, when a...cabinet broke through the wall of his house?

Upon impact with the lawn, the cabinet shattered into match-sticks, scattering the small figurines all over the lawn. Evan set about frantically deleting as many as he could find.

Seeing them vanishing one-by-one, Chester tried to recover as many as he could. Evan couldn't hear what Chester was shouting, but, judging by his facial expression, Evan could make a pretty good guess.

Then, almost simultaneously, they both noticed Lord Captain Boreall's figurine lying in the grass. Chester dashed for it, while Evan moved the cursor to it, intending to delete it. Chester grabbed a hold of it, while Evan selected it with the 'move' cursor.

To his credit, Chester maintained his hold on the figurine as Evan made his best attempts to yank it out of his grip. Chester's grip was slipping, and Evan was growing more and more frustrated with Chester's continued resistance. Chester's grip unexpectedly slipped, which led to all the force Evan was putting on the figure with nowhere to go. Thus, the figure was flung into the air. Time seemed to slow as it flew in a graceful arc, and collided with the blue orb.

Both kids stared in bewilderment as the orb emitted a blinding light and morphed to take on a new form.

Before them now stood. Or, rather, floated a strange ghostly-blue version of commander Boreall, mainly recognizable by his oversized shoulder pauldrons, and his bald head. Slightly more odd was the fact that he didn't seem to have arms... his gauntlets just kinda floated there... His legs were also absent, replaced by a ghostly tail. Much like a genie from some bad cartoon.

Evan had completely forgotten his previous quest to purge Chester's lame-ness, and so did Chester, it seems, as he messaged Evan, without any anger for having most of his property destroyed.

-InquisitoralLogician [IL] began pestering EnragedExtremist [EE]-

IL: Evan. Do you also see the ghost of Captain Boreall?

EE: Yeah,

IL: Ok then.

EE: Is it still just floating there and following you around?

IL: I think so. I don't know why it's not doing anything different.

EE: What do you mean?

IL: The orb of pointlessness turned into a ghost Spess Ranger. And it's still just floating there.

IL: It's just that now. It's about 400^10 % creepier. Because it has a face now.

IL: I wish it would just say or do something.

EE: Are you mad at me?

IL: I am just tired now. Give me a day to recover. Then I can yell at you some more. Deal?

EE: Ok then.

IL: WAIT. Its saying something.

EE: What? What is happening? I can't hear, tell me!

IL: It's just gibberish.

EE: Hmm... if we threw a thing at it, and it now talks, perhaps if we throw more stuff at it, it will be more coherent.

IL: Ok, what else should I throw at it?

EE: Hold on.

-EnragedExtremist [EE] ceased pestering InquisitoralLogician [IL]-

Evan moved the camera to Chester's kitchen, opened a drawer, trying extra hard to avoid tearing the cabinet out of the wall, and withdrew a wooden spoon. Moving back to the former orb, he dropped the spoon into it.

Another flash of light, and now, Boreall floated with a spoon, held in ghostly floating gauntlet. Perfect.

-EnragedExtremist [EE] began pestering InquisitoralLogician [IL]-

EE: Anything?

IL: Still gibberish.

EE: Dang.

EE: So now what?

IL: Well. Before someone interrupted me. I was about to place the totem onto a suspicious pedestal on the Alchemeter.

EE: Why?

IL: Well. The totem and the pedestal both seem to have roughly the same diameter.

IL: Almost as if the Alchemeter's pedestal was designed for something with the exact dimensions of this totem.

EE: Oh, and you came up with this all on your own, did you?

IL: What are you insinuating?

EE: Nothing

yet, that is

EE: Anyway, you go do that then. But, are you sure that were doing this in the right order?

IL: What do you mean by that?

EE: Well, maybe we needed to punch the card last, or carve the totem before we punch the card.

IL: No. I think we are doing this correctly. Hopefully anyway.

EE: ok then. See-ya

-EnragedExtremist [EE] ceased pestering InquisitoralLogician [IL]-

Evan watched Chester fiddle with his modus, and uncaptchalogue the now carved totem onto the Alchemeter's pedestal. Chester then proceeded to (presumably) punch random buttons on the Alchemeter's control panel until the suspended device in the center of the contraption began to glow and (presumably, because Evan couldn't hear things) make a generic charging noise. Then, the large... pillar-thing that suspended the device began to shift, revealing itself to be a type of... robotic arm?

The arm maneuvered the device closer to the totem and began scanning it with some sort of... laser? This process continued for several seconds before a flash of light emanated from the circular platform that was the center of the Alchemeter.

When the flash cleared, a blue book was in the center of the device. The carved totem was gone. The book looked...odd, it had the same strange... crystaly appearance as the totem and the orb-turned spaceman ghost.

Evan wondered why after all the hassle and convoluted challenges they had gone through, their reward was a book.

To complain about the crappy reward he messaged Chester.

-EnragedExtremist [EE] began pestering InquisitoralLogician [IL]-

EE: This is it?

EE: A book is the result of all our tireless experimentation?

EE: I demand a refund

IL: Settle down. We need to figure out what we do next before the counter reaches zero.

EE: What happens when it hits zero?

IL: Bad stuff.

IL: HOLY JEBUS!

EE: What?

IL: The ghost man tugged on my sleeve and scared the jeebers out of me.

EE: Why

IL: I don't know. He's still tugging and now he's pointing at the sky.

EE: I think he may have brain damage.

IL: No...

IL: I think I can see something...

EE: What?

IL: No idea. There's a bright object in the sky.

EE: Aliens?

IL: No. Like a star. But at daytime. It's very small. I can't tell what it is.

IL: But this guy seems to be pretty worked up about it.

EE: It's probably nothing.

IL: Yeah.

IL: Now then. We need to do something with this book to progress.

EE: Read it? Maybe it's the instruction manual for sburb

IL: If that's the case. This makes the Light Souls opening level look positively straightforward and logical by comparison.

IL: Anyway. Going to scan through now. Don't bother me unless it's urgent.

EE: Okay then, Bye

IL: Talk to you again in... like three minutes. Knowing my luck. Bye.

-EnragedExtremist [EE] ceased pestering InquisitoralLogician [IL]-

Evan watched Chester scan through the book's pages. Judging by his facial expression, the book did not illuminate them on the appropriate course of action. Looking back at the Cruxtruder, he could see that the timer now read 00:00:10:00, or, ten minutes until... something. Since said timer had Chester worried, Evan surmised that it was probably not counting down to a surprise birthday party for Chester... Speaking of which, today was Chester's birthday. Right. Maybe that was why Chester was all pissy today, because he forgot. That suddenly made a lot more sense.

Getting back on track, Evan looked into the sky, on a whim, trying to see the UFO? That Chester pointed out. Almost immediately, he saw it. A fiery dot in the sky, getting bigger by the second. Seeing as it wasn't moving to the side, it was staying still, and only getting bigger, it meant that whatever it was, it was heading straight for the house.

Gazing back to Chester, he could see him frantically flipping through the book, apparently still without having found anything useful inside it. For a few minutes, Evan sat there and flipped between the agitated and panicky Chester, who had also noticed the big thing in the sky, and the thing in the sky itself, which Evan was sure was either a falling satellite, or a space rock of some kind...like a comet. Yeah, a comet, that works.

Chester then switched to his laptop and Evan's pesterchum beeped.

-InquisitoralLogician [IL] began pestering EnragedExtremist [EE]-

IL: i don't get it The book is supposed to be used somehow. So I don't die a fiery death.

EE: Have you read it?

IL: THREE TIMES

EE: Three times?

IL: its a small book

EE: Well, maybe do something else with it?

IL: Like what?

EE: If I knew what, you would have already done it.

IL: I know. I know. I just need time to think.

EE: Hate to rush you, but there's three minutes and counting.

IL: I know.

-InquisitoralLogician [IL] ceased pestering EnragedExtremist [EE]-

At this point, the comet was absolutely massive in the sky. Small chunks of it were already falling around town. The timer read 00:00:03:00 .

Evan and Chester were both panicking at this point. In the background of the yard, Evan could see the ghost-orb running, or, floating around, windmilling it's arms in the air. It seems that even strange orb things didn't want to die.

The timer read 00:00:02:00 .

Evan could visibly see Chester growing more and more desperate and freaked out. Without volume, the whole scene was quite frightening. Even for him, the kid who once fought a bear because his dad told him not to.

The timer read 00:00:01:00

The sky turned a hellish red as the sprinkle of a few small rocks turned into a veritable rainstorm of them. From his flying 'magic'? camera Evan bore witness to a scene of increasing devastation. Trees and lawns across the neighborhood were set ablaze as hot fragments landed in them. Windows were broken in by the small rocks, which were growing in size with every passing second. A good ways down the block, a car was crushed beneath a chunk of rock the size of a refrigerator.

The timer read 00:00:00:30

Evan saw Chester slam the book shut and stand up, a look of resignation on his face. He stood up and faced the rock.

The timer read 00:00:00:20

Enraged by Chester's defeatism, Evan messaged him, but Chester's laptop was on the other side of the yard.

The timer read 00:00:00:10

The comet was overwhelmingly close to the house. It was massive, easily the size of a one story house. Not big enough for global extinction, but more than big enough to wipe the whole neighborhood off the map.

00:09

Chester glared at it, as if to say 'do your worst'

00:08

Evan watched, trying to think a way out of it.

00:07

Maybe he could make a wall and ceiling with the 'build' tool to block the comet.

00:06

Not enough Grist. Even if there was, who was he kidding, it wouldn't stop the comet.

00:05

Ghostly Captain Boreall floated up to Chester and stood (floated?) beside him.

00:04

Chester dropped the book.

00:03

The book fell.

00:02

The book hit the ground with a gentle thud. A white light enveloped everything, and Evan's camera went black.

00:01

Evan gazed at his screen in confusion. What happened, the comet hadn't hit yet?

00:00

The comet hit.