We're back in business! Sorry for the break guys, but y'know, I've been around and stuff. Don't worry though, I intend on finishing this story before moving onto anything else. Before we go into chapter nine, let's talk to a reviewer first.

Mighty Agamemnon: Thank you for reviewing! Yeah, Donald can be seen as both in the right and in the wrong. It just depends on who's point of view you're looking at it from. The thing is, Donald doesn't seem to care for anyone's point of view other than his own.

With that out of the way, let's continue to the story! (By the by, thanks to the guys at "/khg/" for all your feedback and support!)

Word Count: 3512 words.


Device Driver

Alternative Title: In Which Donald Turns Into A Desperate, Desolate Neckbeard

A software component that permits a computer system to communicate with a device.

Geoff was true to his word, he didn't contact Donald for weeks.

The situation was also vice versa, Donald found himself unable to contact Geoff as well. He had done all he could with the business card when it came to repairing it, but the damage he had done was far too great to restore it to its former glory.

He tried the phone book, but Farmer was still publicly recognized as a celebrity, fraud or not, and thus did not have a personal number listed.

Thanksgiving was great, by the way.

It was the ninth of December when Donald woke up that morning. You know, because all great hiatuses begin in bed, right?

Donald's actions had taken a toil on his mental health, and as a result built up a jar full of mixed emotions. The most prominent of which being his anger.

In order to ventilate such distress, Donald sat at his computer, and began typing away a realistically impossible scenario, utilizing not even the slightest bit of his full writing potential. Because of that, he was able to get away with even the most stupidest of grammar mishaps, and the most vulgar of references.


Untitled Fantasy Ventilation

"Beeehoooold the wizaaaaarrrd,"

"Beeeeewaaaaaare his pooooowerrrrrrr!"

"In a land forsaken to be cursed by a bunch of nonsensical mythical creatures..."

At this point, Donald began to imagine excessively heavy metal music going on within the innards of his mind. If only to just raise the badass factor.

"There was once a bitchin' wizard!"

"Who got all the girls in the yard!"

"He had them all suck him up,"

"'Cause that's what got him hard!"

"Whenever the Realm of Light was in distress,"

"The generic citizens need no fear!"

"For the wizard would not stop fighting, even after finishing a game of chess!"

Donald smiled. He didn't have a single clue why, but for some reason. He liked that line. Maybe it was the delivery?

"A flurry of Neoshadows try to stage an attack!"

"But the wizard doesn't give 'em any flack!"

"He swipes the Keyblade once, but still kicks their darkness-inflated ass!"

"The Dragoon believes he can win!"

"Only to be, kicked, in the shin!"

"Striving to protect the many worlds!"

"The Axeflapper interrupts his girls!"

"He gives the emotion a kick filled with justice and hardness!"

"Re-assuring that the world not be conquered by typical darkness!"

"The Tyranto Rex tries his luck!"

"That monster soon finds himself fucked!"


Donald would have written more than just that. (Honestly, from the way it looked like, it was starting to turn into a song more than a story...) Had it not been for Mickey interrupting his almost-robotic typing.

"Uhh Don, what are you doing?"

Donald snapped out of his trance, trembling from Mickey's interruption.

"Don't do that!"

"Don't do what?"

"You could have killed me!"

Mickey scratched his head, "Pretty sure I was talking at room volume..."

"Well, well...well...You could have spilt my coffee! I could have burnt myself or, or even worse, short-circuit this laptop!"

Mickey looked into the coffee mug, finding nothing but a few its, bits, of liquid, "Don. That mug's empty. Wait, wait a minute, have you been up all night?"

"W-What?! No! You're crazy! Of course not! I, I got my eight hours and more! What is this, twenty questions?! You're going to ask me a bunch of stuff and keep me from doing work? You're going to ask me if I fucked Mc'Mom next?!"

Mickey held his hands up, surprised by his roomie's sudden defensive behavior, "No, not at all! The whole reason you're even home in the first place is because you don't want to work!...Least not injustice work. It's just, your eyes, they look kinda...bloodshot. Are you feeling alright?"

"Never better!" Donald responded with a few twitches of his right eye.

Mickey narrowed his eyes, scratching his chin, "I don't believe you. Usually if you stay up late, your sanity is kept in check, and your eyes don't look like they've sunk three meters into your head."

"Since when did you become so judgmental?!"

"I'm not judgmental, I'm just pointing out the obvious! And Captain Motherfucking Obvious says that you've gone bonkers! Now, I'm not a therapist, but I suggest that the best thing for you to do now is for you to take a long, relaxing, walk in the woods."

Donald twitched rapidly, the red streaks surrounding his pupils contrasting against the purple circles under his eyes, "Do you know what happens in the woods during the winter?"

"See, now you're acting like me!" Mickey walked over to him, looking at the laptop, "Get up, stop writing this-,"

He paused briefly to read what Donald wrote down.

"The Wizard inserts his godly girth into the golden mine and penetrates it with the hopes of achieving the glory of discovering the most hidden gem- Jesus christ, it's all trash talk! What are you doing, Don, this isn't you!"

"I'd probably be better off if I was. Listen Mick, suppose I didn't get eight hours of glorious sleep-dreaming. Now, if I told you just whythat's so, do you promise not to tell anyone?"

Mickey ran a finger over his mouth, "Have I ever disappointed you?"

That was a question that didn't even need to be acknowledged with a response.

"Fine. Mick, short story because I know your disappointingly low attention spam; I need to find Geoff!"

"You need to who and the what now?"

Donald muttered a few words, causing Mickey to make a face of confusion. He didn't hear that at all, "Huh? Say that again."

Donald crossed his arms, scowling in the other direction. He repeated his words, but the volume still wasn't enough to get through to Mickey, "Yeah, you're still as quiet as fuck. Say that again, and say it loud!"

"I was wrong."

"One more time?"

"Are you teasing me?"

"No. Say that again."

"I was wrong."

"You were what?"

Donald grabbed his friend's shoulders, staring at him helplessly, "I was wrong! I was wrong, for once I was wrong, okay?! I messed up bad Mick, and now I can't fix it because a few weeks ago I convinced Geoff to never speak to me again! I've tried so hard to get over it, but I can't accept failure, you have to help me Mick! Living in relaxation is suffering!"

"Relaxation is suffering? Holy crap. You're serious aren't you?"

"Yes! Yes, I'm serious, come on, help! I've tried everything, but all my sources aren't helping because they're dated and happen to follow the belief that Farmer's still some rich hack!"

"Couldn't you have tried the internet?"

"No dice. It was like one of the first things I tried. I even looked at the goddamn phonebook! What kinda person still uses those things?!"

Mickey scratched his chin again, trying to think of a plan. Of course, Mickey's plans almost always guaranteed some sort of catch.

"Have you tried an imageboard?"

"An image-what?"

"A board full of anonymous users who have the potential to help you! Each have their own individual unique sources, and one of them is just bound to have the information you're looking for!" Mickey said with a smile, sitting down and swiping the laptop away, "Alrighty! Now to close out this literature smut and get to the cesspool of internet cancer!"

Do you wish to save this document before closing?

Mickey was about to maneuver the mouse to the "No." option when Donald suddenly swiped the mouse and clicked the "Yes." option.

"You can't be freaking serious..." muttered Mickey.

"Hmm, I just realized I didn't name it yet...Ah, I'll just leave a placeholder name for now."

After saving the document as BitchesAndBigMacs. txt Mickey took back control of the computer, "Alright, there's a bunch of imageboards to choose from, which one do you think will be able to help us?" Mickey asked, typing into the address bar.

"I've heard about these kinda places, aren't they all cancerous?"

"Cancerous is a buzzword these days, now since you seem kinda in a rush, we'll try the "Anything Goes" board rather than the "Literature" board.

Upon clicking the "AG" board, Donald wasn't surprised to see a brimming cesspool of eye-boiling immature content, causing him to question whether this was just an excuse for Mickey to check up on his "updates". (As he called them.)

And it was, partially.

"Why is there an entire thread dedicated to pubic hair shaving?"

"Uhh, yeah...Let's just scroll over that." Mickey hastily replied, moving the mouse over to the "New Thread" section, "Alright. So how do you want to type this out?"

Donald thought about it, and he was going to plan on starting it out intelligently with vague reasoning for his motives, but then he took the attention spam of the users into considerations.

He instead substituted for something less-than-embarrassing.

Mickey typed in an extremely crude message requesting for any tidbits of information on Geoff, the crude format was due to Mickey's reasoning, for he told Donald that typing style is what grabs the user's attention the most. Donald didn't understand such logic, but he went with it.

Although he would be lying if he said he enjoyed such word substitutions like "plz".

You gotta do what you gotta do.


Donald was constantly checking the computer, at the oddest of intervals too. Sometimes second after second, other times minute after minute, and on one occasion, he took a five hour break to preserve the potential of reading new posts.

Their thread only got a few replies, none of them being much helpful, or any help at all. It was astounding how he even got to see some blatantly inappropriate indecencies before getting a passable response. After one would be pruned by the active moderators, Donald would then hastily make another, this process would end up spilling into the next few days.

"This is insane, Mick! I've been at this computer for days and I've gotten no useful information from these guys! For god fucking sakes, I got a leaked picture of Geoff's freaking whopper of a penis out of all the stuff I could have asked for! Now not only am I mentally scarred, I'm going to have to brush my eyes, my eyes!"

Mickey stood from afar, watching him ventilate his frustration again, "Well to be fair, I didn't guarantee that this would work. Just because they're anonymous people doesn't mean they're all based dudley-do-rights."

"You never guaranteed that it wouldn't work either."

"True, true. How long have you been at the computer anyway? I swear we made that thread like in the morning, it's six now. Have you even showered yet? Have you even showered period?!"

Donald gave it some good thought, having realized that he has been at the table longer than what was good for one's health, "Uh...What day is it then?"

"Friday."

"Date?"

"The fourteenth."

"You mean it's not the ninth?"

"No Don, it's not, that was a Sunday, and a week ago."

"Then no."

It took five more seconds of silence until Mickey continued their conversation.

"So...Shouldn't you be go doing that?"

Donald stopped typing, looking up at the ceiling. After some much-needed thinking, he sighed, "I guess."

Mickey breathed a sigh of relief, but that relaxation subsided once Donald revealed his true motives.

"Once our thread gets pruned."

Having to deal with the horrible truth that Donald was turning into the grimiest of neckbeards, Mickey left the living room, "You know, you're slowly de-volving into the worst kind of person."

"All thanks to you!" he retorted.

Mickey continued on his way to his room, now fully aware of what the drastic in drastic measures really meant. He grabbed the phone and dialed in a number, hoping to talk to someone who wasn't swimming in a sea of insanity. Someone as infallible, phlegmatic, but not as uproarious, as he was.

"Minnie?"

"Mm?" replied a voice on the other line.

"We have a problem-" Mickey began to start, but he was promptly interrupted by the girl.

"Oh god, oh god! This is it, this is "the" call isn't it?! I have the Big-C don't I!?"

"Ugh, don't tell me your delirious now too?"

"Aww, you're actually serious? Well I'll stop playing around then, okay, tell me what's up!"

Over the few weeks that have gone by since their first real encounter, Mickey and Minnie's dynamic was constantly growing. To the point where Mickey questioned whether a woman could be a much better friend than his own roommate.

At the moment, their dynamic was mostly mutual. To what extent was currently unknown, as it was frequently shifting around.

"I think Don's gone insane."

"Is this the part where I ask you to tell me something I don't know?"

"No! It's not just that! I'm not talking about pessimistic-sarcastic-over-the-edge Donald, I'm talking obsessed-crazy-complete bonkers Donald! He doesn't want to admit that he's wrong, so he's doing all he can to make everything right, and all he's done is spent the entire day at the computer staring at unwanted leaked photos of Geoff Farmer's penis! And he doesn't even care about his hygiene, that's like, unlike him at all!"

"Hm, I guess that is bad, but what do you want me to do about it?"

"You mean "us"-"

"Us?"

"Us. I work terrible alone, you should know this by now."

He heard her sigh over the line, "Ugh, fine. But what do you want us to do about it then? His sights seem so set on finding that guy..."

Mickey didn't hesitate to reveal his plan, "We do the one thing that he was too filled with pride to even think of doing! That being said, you wouldn't happen to have-..."

His following words came out as a string of mumbles, even though he knew no one else in the apartment could hear him.

Better to be safe than sorry.


That exact plan wasn't as complex as Mickey would have hoped, but the accuracy of its success was as good as any others, so he couldn't really complain.

Donald entered the living room after a small break to buy some donuts, his first time going outside since his seemingly infinite "monitoring time" began. He was surprised to find that the lights were off, and that his computer was shut, even after he made sure to leave it on before leaving.

"What the..." said Donald suspiciously, narrowing his lifeless sunken eyes.

The lights suddenly flickered on, revealing Mickey sitting at the couch, arms and legs crossed.

"O-Oh! Fuck! Mick, I-I uh, didn't see you there!"

"Don, this is an intervention. And I would have liked to have more people in attendance to raise potency, but Minnie had to get some groceries and everyone else didn't really care. So it's just me."

"Intervention?! Intervention for what?!"

"Your obsession with locating Geoff to prove that you can revert everything back to status quo is getting in the way of your infinite relaxation! Plus, it's taking the worst toll on your hygiene, jesus, it's like a pig topped a cow in a sauna in here!"

"What does that imagery have to do with me? I'm just fixing what I screwed up!"

"In the most disturbing way possible, yes. See Don, you're what the articles on Wikipedia taught me about five minutes ago, you're a cold case example of- wait for it- an overkiller!"

"Overkiller?"

"Overkiller! You don't want to admit you're wrong, so you're covering it up by trying to fix it. You don't legitimately feel bad, it's just an exaggerated ego check!"

Donald clasped his hands together, crossing one leg over the other, "How do you know that Mick?"

"There are more than six empty paper cups in this room. Six! That doesn't sound like a lot, but it is! What are you doing with your life man?!"

"At the moment, my own form of relaxation, but don't worry Mick! I can fix it! I can fix us! I'll be back in the workforce in no time, and I can have my miserable life again, my miserable life that isn't as miserable at what it is now! It can be all right again!"

Mickey took a few steps back, finding the rambling to be a bit...out of tune, to say the least, "Alright, you've gone crazy. Thank goodness that I have a back-up plan for that. Anyhow, since I know I'm not going to be able to convince you to give this all up due to that inflated-fucking-ego, I decided to just take an alternative route. So I contacted Geoff for you."

"W-What?! How did you- How on Earth did you!?-"

"I contacted him on his official Facebook page. It's not that hard man." Mickey quickly admitted with a hasty shrug, "How come you didn't do that in the first place?"

Donald sat there with a palm plastered to his chin, realization hitting him as he blankly stared at the wall. Feeling like the stupid one for the first time in a long while. Hours wasted, when the easiest damn alternative in the world could have been used, all the potential he could have done with himself in the meanwhile, again, wasted.

"I should probably go take a shower."

"You should."

To be fair though, he was never that fond of social networking.


Monday, the following day, was spent fixing the "minor" physical and grotesque damage done to Donald's person as a result of spending days glued to the monitor. At least, the first few hours were. The rest was spent on readying him for his upcoming scheduled meet with Geoff. Hopefully this one being more inviolate than the last.

Despite Mickey's obvious solution to that part of the predicament, he was no Einstein. There still remained the ordeal of actually convincing a supposed lunatic like Geoff to accept Donald's invitation to a partnership.

To Donald, it was more of a "treaty" than a partnership, but the principle still stood. Collaboration was going to be involved whether he liked it or not.

The afternoon began with Donald sitting at a patio table just outside Starbucks, sipping a drink and casually awaiting for Geoff to arrive. Mickey was inside the building, spending more time spying on his friend's progress than tending to his job requirements.

It's elementary that one doesn't live on a simple shit paycheck and hope that they live for another month in the comfort of their home, if their proposition fails to take off, then the two were forced to face that they would drown in a sea of their own troubles for the rest of their unnatural lives

It was startling imagery for a first-timer, to say the least.

Donald thought he would instantly break out and tell all to Geoff the second he arrived, but to his complete and utter shock, he didn't. He didn't even do so much as make a response.

So the next few seconds were spent as the two stupidly stared at each other with their hands clasped together for an unnecessary amount of time, apparently studying each other.

When the time came for one of the two goofballs to finally speak up, Geoff seized the opportunity with open arms.

"You called me here for what now?"

"Well, technically that was Mick-"

"But you did want to speak with me, I know you did! Mickey said so, and gosh, if that's all you really wanted, you could have just asked! Instead of well, you know, overreacting and telling me to leave you alone and whatnot-"

"You stalked me in the supermarket while I was buying two jugs of indifferent milk. Of course I would overreact!"

"You're overreacting now!"

"I know I am!"

"And now you're causing a scene."

Donald shifted his eyes, finding himself being stared at by a handful of gossiping patrons.

His eyes found their way back to Geoff's, it was best to pretend those peeping toms didn't exist.

"Okay, so maybe I do feel remorse, suppose I do give this partnership the A-okay then, what diid you have in mind?"

That's was the thing though, Geoff didn't have anything in mind. It was unlike him, someone so organized and always prepared, to not have something planned. He was too busy focusing on getting this short-tempered dick to listen to him that he didn't plan anything for just this occasion!

It was extremely stupid in retrospect.

To be fair though, everyone has their days.

Geoff had little time for thinking, Donald was impatiently sitting in front of him, awaiting to hear what "grand master scheme" that the guy's been nagging at him about for weeks on end.

Imagine his face if he were to learn the truth.

Fearing that face, and his reaction his overall, whether it be good or bad, Geoff ultimately came up with something out of the blue and on the spot, using his conversation with Clarabelle earlier as a basis for that plot.

And upon hearing that unknowingly rushed plan, Donald's scowl turned upside-down.


Date I Started Writing This Chapter: September 8th, 2012
Date I Finished Writing This Chapter: October 27, 2012

Once again, apologies for that long wait. I got sidetracked by some other projects, hopefully that won't happen again. Also, happy Halloween everyone! I mean, well, it's two days away, but still, you get the point right?

Please don't forget to review! I enjoy reading them!

See ya real soon!