Authors Notes: Hey guys! I was writing this over on Archive of Our Own but I decided to upload it here as well. I've already written and uploaded Chapters 1— 7 on the other website, so just so you're aware the next few chapters save for chapter 7 aren't going to have any notes at the beginning or the end. If you're really curious for some reason and want to read the end notes on those chapters, just head over there and look up DoomStuck. Anyways, I hope you all enjoy reading this story as much if not more then I enjoyed writing it!


"They are rage, brutal without mercy, but you, little one? One day you will be worse..."

— An Elemental Wraith upon discovering an abandoned infant at the site of an unexplainable meteor impact upon Argent D'Nur millions of years before the creation of the first human civilization on Earth. Said infant would later grow up to become the leader of the Night Sentinels and after the fall of Argent D'Nur would forever become known as the Doom Slayer during his endless one man genocide against the forces of Hell.

[Earth April 13, 2009]

A young boy stood alone in his room. His muscles were abnormally large for one his age due to following a strict self imposed training regimen and even when happy or perfectly calm he had an eerie dangerous air about him that tended to make others his age and even many adults instinctively attempt to avoid him. He had short black hair, eyes as orange as molten magma, and his face almost always looked somewhat serious. He wore a plain army green short sleeve shirt, simple blue jeans which were tucked into his heavy polished black military style boots, as well as a pair of glasses on his naturally grim face. His name was John Egbert and today was his birthday. As a result there were a number cakes scattered about his room.

He had a variety of interests. He particularly enjoyed action movies quite a bit, though he did sometimes enjoy really terrible movies as well. He liked to program computers, though he wasn't very good at it. He also liked mechanics quite a bit and unlike programming he was actually pretty good at it, he had once even convinced his father to let him fix up an old broken chainsaw he had been going to throw away and had modified it to have larger and more aggressive teeth he designed specifically for ripping through flesh and bone — though it was currently hanging up on his wall for display since there was no fuel in it and he wasn't allowed to actually use it. He absolutely loved the occult or demonology to be more specific and was an aspiring amateur demon hunter, failing that though he decided he might just join the military or something when he was older. He also liked playing games some times, especially first person shooters.

He walked over to his drawer looking for his fake arms. Not seeing them, he grimaced as he remembered they were in his demonology/comedy chest. Walking over to his demonology chest he moved the cake off the top of it and set it on his bed opened it up and looked inside. Spotting his fake arms, he picked them up and captchalogued them in his sylladex. He sometimes used them to pull half-hearted antics that he didn't really find very funny or enjoyable in an attempt to keep with the Egbert family traditions of jokes and pranksterism and to connect with his father who had a strange fondness for harlequins. Though he did try his best to keep it to himself so as to not upset his father John absolutely hated both pranks and harlequins, granted he didn't hate them any where near as much as he utterly despised demons with every fiber of his being but he still didn't like them.

He decided to go through the rest of the chest's contents. Inside he kept an array of "humorous" and occult artifacts. Each one of his occult artifacts was a devastating weapon in the hands of a skilled demon hunter, while on the other hand his "humorous" artifacts were just kind of lame and annoying no matter who used them. Unfortunately, he was not a skilled demon hunter and he hoped he would never be a real prankster of any sort.

Among the artifacts were: two fake arms [currently captchalogued in his sylladex], one pair of solid iron shackles [which he personally inscribed with hundreds of tiny occult runes and symbols so he could effectively restrain demons], one large knife [which he also inscribed with hundreds of tiny occult runes to kill demons], one heavy solid steel helmet with a bullet proof glass visor modeled after the helmet of his favorite badass demon slaying video game character, Flynn Taggart or "Doomguy" as he was often called [the inside of which John had filled with occult runes to protect his mind from demonic possession], one pair of begal puss glasses, several smoke pellets, one copy of Colonel Sassacre's Daunting Text Of Magical Frivolity And Practical Japery, and one abridged copy of "A Guide To The Demons Of Hell And How To Slaughter Them" by the world famous demon hunter D.S. Argent [easily equal in size to Colonel Sassacre's Daunting Text], and one copy of Harry Anderson's "Wise Guy", by Mike Caveney from when John's father had somehow confused his interest in the occult and demonology with an interest in stage magic.

Thinking some of this stuff may come in handy at some point, he decided to take the smoke pellets with him just to be safe. If he ran into his father at some point, as much as he hated it, he knew he might need to do a prank of some sort and decided that a bit of harmless smoke could potentially work depending on how he went about using it. After storing them in his Sylladex he only had two empty captchalogue cards remaining. Deciding he should probably take something to defend himself with as well, he also captchalogued his demon killing knife and it was immediately transferred to his Strife Deck in his Strife Portfolio which consisted of two Strife Specbi, one allocated to BladeKind Abstratus while the other was currently blank.

He frowned slightly as he looked at his sylladex. It's fetch modus was currently dictated by a stack data structure which had always frustrated him to no end because of just how inconvenient it was. He was never great with data structures and found the concept both puzzling and irritating. He just hoped to advance to a more practical fetch modi for his sylladex when he had a little more experience.

He walked over to the long thin box next to the door of his room before removing the note that was taped to it. He detected the distinct smell of aftershaves and colognes coming from the note, which immediately told him it was from his dad. It read: "Happy birthday son. I know you have been asking for one of these for a long time and you've already proven yourself to have enough Mangrit that I believe I can finally trust you with one. Now you must always remember the four rules of gun safety: 1. Always treat it as if it is loaded 2. Never point it at something you are not willing to destroy 3. Keep your finger off the trigger until the sights are on target and you have made the decision to shoot. 4. Always be sure of your target and what's behind it. I sincerely hope you realize just how big of a responsibility a weapon like this is and you never abuse it. That being said, you are a very mature young boy John and I know you will be responsible with it. I am so proud of you."

John's eyes widened excitedly as he read the note, "No way..." he muttered to himself, with a smile stretching across his normally grim face. Setting the note down on his dresser, he grabbed the present and opened it. Inside was a small .12 gauge sawed off double barrel shotgun, and next to it was a rolled up poster. There was no ammo, unfortunately, but that was fine since it wasn't like he could just shoot it in his back yard or something since they had neighbors. Maybe if he was lucky he could convince his dad to take him to a gun range later or something so he could try it out, but for now he was absolutely ecstatic to even have one in the first place. He had been trying to convince his father to get him a sawed off shotgun for years and it had finally happened! He had so many ideas for modifications he could make to it that he could hardly wait to take it to the utility room and start tinkering with it as soon as possible.

In particular he was currently thinking of trying to engrave some occult runes on it so it could hurt demons and add an awesome grappling hook attachment to the bottom of the barrels, but he would have to do that later. For now he just captchalogued the shotgun and took the rolled up poster out of the box. He was somewhat surprised when the poster fell apart as he picked it up, turning out to be two new posters rather then just one. He captchalogued them as well and his fake arms were immediately pushed out of his deck as it ran out of space. He scowled at the fake arms in frustration but after a moment he just sighed and relaxed. Perhaps it was for the best since they were probably completely useless anyway. But he realized he shouldn't do that again unless he wanted to drop his smoke pellets and suffer the consequences.

He had the sudden urge to start speaking in tongues while scrawling a pentagram and all sorts of occult runes on the floor in the middle of his room in his own blood in order to open a portal to Hell. Shaking his head to clear his mind he clenched his fists, gritted his teeth, and furiously growled under his breath, "Get out of my head you fucking bastards!" Forcing back the hellish influence out of shear force of will and absolute undiluted hatred to the best of his abilities he quickly rushed over to his demonology/comedy chest and threw on his anti demonic possession helmet. The demonic influence vanished almost immediately and he sighed in relief. "Fucking demons...", he muttered to himself. They were always trying to pull crap like this on him — which was one of many reasons for his mind numbing, earth shattering, apocalyptic hatred for demons and anything demonic — but they wouldn't be getting their disgusting blood-thirsty claws on John Egbert's mind today, nor any other day for that matter!

Still, he was getting a lot better at resisting their influence on his own. Pretty soon he wouldn't even need to use his helmet at all! Well, technically he didn't need it anyways. He had resisted demonic possession for years before he ever even got it or filled it with runes, but it helped him out immensely as resisting demonic possession on his own was really hard and always took a lot out of him.

Once he was sure the possession attempt had passed, he took the helmet off and put it back in the chest. 'Now what was I doing again...?' he thought to himself, slightly dazed from being forced to resist demonic possession. "Oh, right the posters! I still need to find some way to hang these up." He thought to himself for a moment about how to go about doing so before remembering the tape that had previously attached his dad's note to his present. It would be a crappy hold since the tape had already been used once, but it would work as a temporary solution until he could go down stares and get some fresh tape or a thumb tack or something. Still, he would need some way to cut the tape into two pieces for the different posters. He remembered his knife. Well, it was designed with killing demons in mind but it should be more then capable of cutting a bit of tape as well. After picking up the note and peeling the tape off, he drew his knife from his strife deck. He then carefully cut the tape into two equal pieces and proceeded to combine them with the posters in his sylladex. After finding a couple relatively blank spots on his walls he finally hung the posters up. They were both for two of his favorite movies, one being for "Little Monsters" with Howie Mandel and the other for "Predator" with Arnold Schwarzenegger respectively. When he was done he returned his demon slaying knife to his chest and looked at the calendar next to his window. He had marked two separate dates, his birthday, the 13th of April, and the release date for the highly touted SBURB Beta Launch. It had been three days already. Honestly, it was starting to frustrate him a little.

He considered eating the cake sitting on his dresser just to make a bit of room so he could get the other cake off of his bed but grimaced in distaste. He was starting to get sick of cake as he had been eating it all day. He didn't want to clog his sylladex with it either. Unfortunately, that meant the cake would have to stay put for now.

He heard a notice from his computer. Someone was messaging him.

He pulled up to his computer. This was where he spent most of his time when he wasn't tinkering with his chainsaw in the utility room. He had decorated his desktop with a decent wall paper that he made himself. He was really proud of it. His desktop was also littered with various programming project files. He was so bad at programming sometimes he wondered why he even bothered with it.

His Pesterchum application was flashing. He opened it and saw that only one of his "chums" was logged in and was calling him through Pesterchum's new voice chat feature. John accepted the call.

- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering ghastlyThrasher [GT] at 16:13 -

"Hey. So what sort of insane loot did you rake in today?" Dave inquired curiously.

"I got the sawed off double barrel shot gun I've been wanting, it's so awesome! No ammo though. oh, I also got a Little Monsters poster and a Predator poster. I'm going to watch one or maybe even both of them again today. The "get to the chopper" scene from Predator was so awesome and the apple juice scene from little monsters was sort of funny." John explained with a small smile.

"Nice, dude! After seeing the massive teeth you put on your dads old chainsaw, it should be pretty cool to see what you have planned for that shotgun. No wait, let me guess, you're thinking of adding a flamethrower or chainsaw bayonet to it or something overly brutal like that right?"

John chuckled and shook his head at that. "Nah, but those are some good ideas for me to consider working on later. Making a tiny electric chainsaw bayonet sounds fun. I doubt my dad would let me make a flamethrower though. Right now I'm mainly thinking of adding a compact high velocity grappling hook launcher to the bottom of the barrels. I already have a design for it in mind too and the blades should be able to serve as a sort of bayonet in their own right... Well, as long as it works like I think it will."

"Sounds cool." Dave stated approvingly. "Anyways, did you get the beta yet?"

"Not yet, unfortunately. Did you?"

"Man i got two copies already, but I don't care. I'm not going to play it or anything. The game sounds boring. Did you see how it got slammed in game bro?"

John rolled his eyes and leaned back in his chair. "Game bro is a joke and we both know it, dude."

"Yeah... Hey, why don't you go check your mail? Maybe it's there now."

"Alright, I guess." John stated. Ending the call, he stood up and walked over to the window of his room. Looking out over his front yard he saw his punching bag hanging from the tree. It had the faces of different kinds of demons drawn all over it and it had patches in several places from where it tore from when he got a bit carried away while he imagined that he was pummeling actual demons into a bloody pulp with his bare fists. It was always awkward trying to explain to his dad how he actually managed to punch a hole through something that was specifically designed to be punched whenever that happened.

Beside the driveway sat the mailbox and The little red arm-swingy-dealy thing or whatever it is called was flipped up! What the hell is that thing called anyway? He did not have time for these semantics. The red flippy-lever thing meant he had new mail. And that meant the beta might be here!

He was about to rush down stairs when he heard a car pull into the drive way. He looked back out the window and frowned slightly. It looked like his dad was back from the grocery store and was going to beat him to the mail. "Damn..." he sighed in mild disappointment.

He decided to check the mail later. If he went down stairs to get it, his dad would likely monopolize hours of his time. He would just have to wait up here in his room for a while. Sometimes he felt like he was doomed to be trapped in this room, in a sense which possibly borders on the titular.

His computer made another noise, letting him know someone was pestering him again. The clockwork of friendship turns ceaselessly, operating the wheels of harassment in perpetuity. Whatever. Dave could just hold his damn horses.

John glanced at D.S. Argent's "A Guide To The Demons Of Hell" and picked the large black and red book up off the ground, wanting to consult with Mr. Argent's bottomless wisdom. However, his arms were already starting to get tired from holding the weight of the massive book. Damn this thing was huge. It could kill a cat if he dropped it. As strong as he was, even he would have to captchalogue it if he was to get very far in reading it. He activated his sylladex and was about to do just that but quickly reconsidered. He wasn't sure he was ready to logjam his other artifacts beneath it just yet. He set the book down and attempted to deactivate his sylladex but instead somehow managed to accidentally captchalogue his fake arms again. He grimaced and slapped a palm against his forehead incredulously, mentally berating himself for the mistake.

He walked over to his computer and set his Pesterchum status down a few rungs to "Bully", not particularly happy that there wasn't a greater variety of status options to choose from. Still, it would just have to work for now. Seeing a program flashing at the bottom of his screen he suddenly remembered that his friend was still pestering him. He shrugged and answered Dave's voice call.

"Well, is it there?" Dave immediately asked. "Please say yes. Maybe you can play it with Rose. She's been pestering me all day about it. She's mackin' on me so hard all the time I'm starting to feel embarrassed for her. I mean, not that I can blame her or anything."

John chuckled and rolled his eyes at that. "Right, right... What lady wouldn't be hopelessly in love with you? I mean, you're just the most attractive guy ever, right?" He inquired sarcastically.

"You know it man." Dave chuckled jokingly. "So, you have it or not?"

"Not yet. My dad has the mail and I guess I have to go get it from him and see if it's there. And I've been busy spending all afternoon fucking around with my stupid sylladex. The damn thing so fucking frustrating!" John explained.

"Oh? What's your modus?"

"Huh?" John asked, his face contorting in confusion.

Dave sighed. "How do you retrieve artifacts from it?"

"Oh. One at a time, I guess. And if I put too much in, something falls out.

"Stack?" Dave asked, bursting into laughter on the other side of the call.

John frowned. "Alright, what's yours then?"

Once he calmed down from his short laughing fit, Dave explained, "Mine? Hash map. My bro taught me a few tricks. He basically knows everything and is awesome.

"What the hell is that?"

"You should probably brush up on your data structures, dude."

"I realize..." John grumbled

"Did you at least allocate your strife specibus?"

"I have two in my Strife Portfolio right now. One is allocated to Bladekind for my demon killing knife, the other is blank since I haven't really bothered with yet."

"You should allocate that one too. It could free up a card for you." Dave told him. "What have you got?"

"I've got my sawed off shotgun, but it's trapped under some stupid fake arms I accidentally captchalogued." John growled in frustration.

"Wow, you really suck at this don't you? Just get rid of the arms and allocate the shotgun to the specibus."

"How?"

"I don't know. Just use them on any old thing and see if it works."

John shrugged at his friend's advice and decided to combine the arms with the first thing he saw, which just so happened to be the cake sitting on his bed. Seeing the arms sticking out of the top of the cake, he regretted his decision almost immediately and mentally berated himself for doing something so stupid on an impulse. Still, it freed up a slot and he could access his shotgun again. He quickly checked the back of his strife specibus for the kind abstratus he had in mind for it and selected "shotgun". His sawed off shotgun was immediately moved over from his captchalogue deck to his strife deck. He decided to report his success to his friend.

"Done." John stated.

"Shotgunkind?"

"Yup."

"Okay, that will be the permanent allocation for your specibus." Dave explained. "I guess i should have mentioned that..."

John scowled slightly. "Yeah, that would have been nice to know before hand. I told you I don't have any ammo for this thing."

"Yeah, sorry about that. Anyways, hope you like shotguns dude!"

John sighed and scratched the back of his head. "I guess it's fine... There are worse weapons and I can't imagine it's going to be all that relevant for the moment. Well, I'll talk to you later, dude." With that he closed the voice call again.

Now that he had some space in his sylladex he decided he should probably put it to use. Getting up he captchalogued D.S. Argent's giant book. Ordinarily this ridiculous book would be way too heavy to carry around in any practical way, even for him. So in this one respect he would willingly admit that the cards offered some convenience.

Thinking about what Dave said about the article in "GameBro" about SBURB, he picked his copy of the magazine up off his desk and flipped to the page where they reviewed the game. He was disappointed but not even remotely surprised to see their "review", if it could even be called that, was absolute bullshit. The reviewer never even played the stupid game for fuck sake! He decided to captchalogue it in case he needed something that burned easily, because burning was all this garbage was good for.

He considered making a disguise out of his anti possession helmet and begal puss glasses but quickly dismissed the idea. His dad wasn't an idiot, there was no possible way such a shitty and all around stupid disguise would even remotely fool him for even a second. Still, there was already one attempt at possession today so it couldn't hurt to at least wear his helmet just to be safe. He captchalogued it and put it on. Unfortunately this took up a card but at least while it was equipped it was temporarily removed from the deck which freed up the card beneath it. Still, he shouldn't have captchalogued it in the first place since he could have just put it on normally and left the card free for other stuff he might need to pick up.

He exited his room into the hallway, ignoring the stupid pictures of comedians and harlequins on the walls and went down the stairs. He was immediately surprised to see a huge present sitting in the middle of the living room but his curiosity was rudely interrupted as the smell of baking filled his nose. He realized that his dad must be cooking even more in the kitchen and groaned in disgust.

He was so sick of cake that it had gotten to the point where he was starting to suspect Betty Crocker herself was a demon. No, he knew she was a demon! Only one of the most evil creatures in existence could ever concoct such a vile and cruel torture as these endless damned cakes! She was a demon and she was using her damned baking empire to gain power and brainwash people into being her devoted cultists so they could open a massive portal to hell in order to bring forth an army of demons conquer the Earth. She had to be! There was no other possible explanation! As such, he made a silent vow that he would one day stop her and her cultists evil plans before they could ever succeed, even if he was forced to endure this hell that was an endless barrage of cake.

With that thought in mind, he walked past the giant present and over to the fireplace. There was a fire burning inside even though it was April and it wasn't all that chilly outside, as there always was at pretty much all times. Seeing this as a golden opportunity, he threw the "GameBro" magazine inside the fire. Unfortunately it didn't burn nearly quickly as he hoped. A piece fell out of the fire, but John quickly grabbed it and threw it back in.

With a sigh he looked up at the sacred urn containing his departed Nana's ashes sitting on the mantel of the fireplace in front of her portrait. He didn't even know how she died since his father never really felt like talking about it. He reached up and tried to grab the sacred urn to get a better look at it but clumsily mishandled it and ended up knocking it over. He grimaced at the mess. He was having absolutely terrible luck today. With that in mind in retrospect, upon mulling cinematic tropes regarding ash-filled urns, this outcome was a virtual certainty. He should have known better. He had to clean this up before his dad saw it.

He quickly captchalogued the ashes and proceeded to combine them with the urn. Fortunately, most of it was put back in the urn but now it was now a total mess. He should have just taken the time to go get a broom and dust pan. It would have been a lot tidier.

With that done, he turned his attention to the large gift sitting in the middle of the room. The note attached to the it read, "Champ. You can do anything if you put your mind to it. I believe in you." Curious about what it was, he decided to open it. When he was done a life sized armless harlequin doll with floppy legs sat in the middle of the floor. John frowned at the harlequin doll and propped it up on the couch. He could only wonder why his dad thought he wanted anything to do with harlequins. After staring at it for a moment its lack of arms reminded him of the fake arms he had upstairs in his room which gave him a weird idea.

He went back upstairs, pulled the arms out of the cake and captchalogued them when his computer began making noise again. He sat down at his computer and checked his Pesterchum account. Another of his friends was trying to start a voice call with him. He accepted the call.

- tentacleTherapist [TT} began pestering ghastlyThrasher [GT] at 16:26 -

"I understand you have recently come into possession of the beta release of "The Game of the Year", as featured in respectable periodicals such as GameBro Magazine." Rose's voice stated through his computer as the call opened.

"Not quite. I still haven't checked the mail. My dad has it. I still need to go get it from him, so be right back." John replied through his helmet.

"John." Rose said, disapprovingly.

"Yeah?" He asked, wondering what he did wrong.

"You're wearing that helmet of yours right now, aren't you? You're talking to me right now while wearing a ridiculous anti demon helmet." John could practically hear Rose crossing her arms in disappointment on the other side of the call.

"Yeah I am, and it's not ridiculous, it's cool!" He shot back.

Rose sighed. "Alright, well, why don't you just go get the game from your father?

"Fine... Wish me luck, I guess." John huffed.

"Good luck." Rose stated before closing the voice call.

John went back down stairs and walked up to the harlequin doll. This was a weird and extremely goofy idea but he was curious. He estimated that there should be just enough frosting on the fake arms to serve as an adequate adhesive. So he attempted to attach the arms to the doll and, much to his surprise, they actually stuck rather then just falling off like he kind of expected them too since frosting wasn't exactly the best replacement for glue or something to that effect.

With that out of the way and out of his head, he decided to go look for his dad so he could retrieve the mail and get his copy of the game. He was probably in the kitchen but John decided to check the study first on the off chance he decided to just leave the mail in there. Walking in he looked at his father's desk and was disappointed to see that the mail wasn't there as he hoped it would be. He was happy to a stray captchalogue card, however, and immediately moved to add it to his sylladex. Unfortunately his finger slipped and he accidentally captchalogued it instead.

"ARGH!" He growled in extreme frustration. Clenching his fists and gritting his teeth he tried to take a few deep breaths in order to calm down. Once he was confident that he wasn't going to smash his sylladex to pieces for being a completely worthless piece of shit, he walked over to the piano in the corner of the study and on a whim decided to play a short haunting refrain. Playing the piano always helped him calm his nerves.

Having calmed down quite a bit, John decided to exhaust all possibilities before plunging into an encounter with his dad. As such he left the house and checked the mail only to find the mailbox predictably empty. Closing the mailbox, he listened to the slight breeze as he got the feeling that today was going to be a long day.

Walking over to the car, he looked inside. He didn't see any mail, but he did see a green package with something that looked like a slip of paper underneath. Could these items have come in the mail? He didn't see anything else that's usually in the mail, like bills and coupons. Maybe his dad forgot to take this stuff inside.

He walked over to the kitchen window and tried to look inside, but he couldn't see a whole lot. It seems his dad has been doing so much baking, the glass has steamed up. God he is so weird. But he could see what's on the table just beside the window. It looks like the mail is there! Included among it is a red package, some bills, his dad's PDA, and an envelope that appears to be suspiciously labeled with the SBURB logo. Unfortunately, the window was locked so he couldn't sneak through and grab them.

Finally deciding to just get this entire ordeal over with, John went back inside and marched into the kitchen. Hearing John enter his dad turned around, holding a huge cake with exactly thirteen unlit candles on the top. John unequipped his helmet. His dad wielded a dreaded artifact of confection and stood between John and the mail. There was only one way to settle this.

STRIFE!

John attempted to AGGRIEVE by using his demon killing knife to slash at the cake but his dad lifted up the cake before his knife could damage it.

His dad then took out a lighter and lit the candles on the cake before trying to give John the giant cake.

John immediately attempted to ABJURE and refused to take the cake, stating he had too much cake today already!

He tried to dodge past his father to rush over and grab the mail but the pesky guardian blocked his path! It seemed he was going to have to engineer some sort of distraction if he wanted to get by.

His father pulled out yet another artifact of confection! The man was absolutely ruthless.

Knowing he was about to have a pie thrown in his face, John put his helmet back on and braced for impact.

His father threw the pie but the Anti Demon Aegis absorbed the brunt of the treat. It looked like his dad would enjoy the prankster's gambit in this exchange, as he almost always did.

John captchalogued the pie tin and unequipped his helmet. Everything in his Sylladex was pushed back a card and the smoke pellets were ejected from the deck. Yes! This could be just the distraction he was... The smoke pellets didn't go off disappointing John greatly.

Knowing he couldn't win this encounter John decided to ACCEDE and reluctantly took the cake his father was trying to give him.

"When two great forces oppose each other, the victory will go to the one that knows how to yield." -Oscar Wilde

Wise words by a man who likely could resist everything but temptation.

The cake forced D.S. Argent's "A Guide To The Demons of Hell And How To Slaughter Them" out of John's Sylladex and it landed on the smoke pellets, causing them to go off and fill the room with harmless smoke.

'Argent you beautiful bastard. Now's my chance!' John thought to himself as he decided to ABSCOND while his dad was busy placating the smoke detector. He quickly snuck over to the table. Seeing his dad's PDA he decided to snag it. Maybe later he could switch the background with something "funny" to prank his father for once rather then being the one who got pranked like he usually was. Stupid family tradition... Besides, it may come in handy later.

As he took the PDA, his spare captchalogue card was forced out of his Sylladex, and consequently integrated with the deck. Now he had five cards to work with.

Seeing the red package was addressed to him, he captchalogued it and the envelope with the SBURB logo beneath it. His helmet was forced out of his sylladex. He quickly picked it back up and put it back on, being careful not to captchalogue it this time so it wouldn't take up space in his sylladex, before rushing out of the kitchen.

Back in the living room he was slightly disappointed to see that one of the fake arms had fallen off the harlequin doll and into yet another cake that was sitting on the couch next to it. Thinking he might have thought of a way to free up a space in his sylladex, he captchalogued the cake on the couch, expelling the pie tin from the bottom card. He then attempted to merge the two cakes to make a double decker cake, thus freeing up a single card that he could use. At least that was the plan. It turned out, however, that instead he merged the two cakes on opposite ends of his Sylladex across all five cards. As a result, every thing in his Sylladex was smushed between the cakes. "What the hell? WHY?! What dumb son of a bitch designed this stupid fucking thing?! ARGH!" He raged as he grew completely fed up with this idiotic storage system.

He retreated upstairs and marched straight for the bathroom. He was going to need something to clean up the mess he was about to make by dissecting the cake. He glanced at the door to his dad's room on the right as he turned left in the hall and went into the bathroom. That door to his dad's room was always locked and John was forbidden from ever entering. His dad had his secrets.

Once inside the bathroom, he could see the back yard from the window. The jewels in its crown were the swing set and the spring-mounted pogo-ride. Both had provided him with years of joy and had been responsible for more then one painful injury and even the occasional broken bone. They were awesome. The same, however, could not be said for this stupid fucking sylladex bullshit which only ever seemed to bring him misery and suffering. 'Fuck who ever the fuck invented these fucking things!' John thought to himself glaring at his sylladex. Anyone who made something this evil has to be a demon in disguise, just like Betty Crocker! He decided right then and there that he needed to find out who invented the sylladex so he could put a stop to their evil schemes for world domination just like had vowed to stop Betty Crocker.

Setting the cake on the ground he proceeded to use his demon hunting knife to carve the PDA, envelope, and package out of it, set them on the counter and took the towel off the rack to clean off the extracted goods and his knife. With that done he retrieved his items, forcing the manhandled cake out of his sylladex and into the toilet. And just like that, his sylladex was full again. He reeeaaally fucking hated this damn thing.

Heading back to his room with his stuff, and a towel since he couldn't just get rid of it for some fucking reason, he heard his Pesterchum notification going off on his computer. Sitting down at his desk, after switching his Pesterchum status to "Rancorous" he checked his chat messages.

- gardenGnostic [GG] began pestering ghastlyThrasher [GT] at 16:34 -

GG: hi happy birthday john! 3

GG: helloooooo?

GG: ok i will talk to you later! :D

- gardenGnostic [GG] ceased pestering ghastlyThrasher [GT] at 16:56 -

- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering ghastlyThrasher [GT] at 16:40 -

TG: hey GG is looking for you why are you even so popular all of a sudden

TG: is today some sort of special occasion or something

TG: did you do something to curry favor with ladies

TG: did you break your leg on a puppy or some shit

TG: dude what are you doing

- turntechGodhead [TG] is now an idle chum! -

GT: i single handedly stopped a massive demonic invasion of earth and closed a massive portal to hell by killing a massive demon by shooting rockets into its brain.

GT: now i am famous, and everyone wants to talk to me a lot.

TG: no stop

TG: just no

TG: doom 2 is a cool game i guess but your unironic obsession with demon hunting is still an unsavory thing to behold

GT: hey, i can easily be just as ironic as you.

GT: what about what i sent you for your birthday?

TG: no those are awesome

GT: what? no, they're stupid, which was the joke. the IRONIC joke. get it?

GT: wait...

GT: you're actually wearing them, aren't you?

TG: im wearing them ironically

TG: because theyre awesome

TG: the fact that theyre ironic makes them awesome

TG: and vice versa

TG: are you taking notes on how to be cool? jesus get a fucking pen

GT: oh yeah sure, i've got a pen right here. *holds up middle finger*

TG: right back at you

TG: anyways, speaking of which

TG: did you get the mail

GT: it was a major fucking struggle but yeah i did.

TG: did there happen to be a package there

GT: yeah, there's a big red one.

TG: you should probably open it

GT: i would, but it's trapped under the sburb beta, so i will probably have to open it after i install the beta. fucking piece of shit sylladex...

TG: oh man the beta came

GT: yup. wanna play it?

TG: haha no way

GT: why?

TG: it sounds so HELLS of boring just get TT to play it she is all about that

GT: where'd she go?

TG: her internet is blinking in and out i guess

TG: probably be back online soon

TG: oh and christ in a sidecar are you still using the stack modus?

TG: no wonder your mood is "rancorous"

TG: seriously dude

TG: you need to BONE UP on your data structures that shit is just ridiculous

GT: i've been struggling with this stupid mother fucking sylladex all fucking day and it's pissing me the fuck off! so yeah that's probably a good idea. thanks, Dave. i'll go do that now.

John closed Pesterchum and began installing the SBURB beta. Almost as soon as he put the disc into his computer a window popped up on his screen saying "Waiting for server to establish connection...". Not really knowing what that meant he decided to deal with it later. Going over to his closet he looked over his array of computer programming guides. Taking out his copy of "Data Structures For Assholes" he looked at the cover and saw it came with a free Fetch Modus in the back. He had no idea how a Fetch Modus worked but at least it sounded a lot better then his stupid fucking Stack Modus and he wouldn't have to go to the trouble of reading this large, boring, and rather ornery book. Turning to the back inside cover he pulled the Fetch Modus out of the plastic sleeve it was stored in and was immediately disappointed to see that it was just the reverse of his stupid Stack Modus. It was dictated by the logic of a queue data structure, operating on a "First In, First Out" method, rather than a "First In, Last Out" method like his Stack Modus.

This modus didn't strike him as a significant upgrade to his previous one. In fact, it almost seems more inconvenient. Still, he figured he might as well give it a chance though after the terrible luck he's had with his Stack Modus. As he switched to the Fetch Modus, he couldn't help but wonder if it was possible to switch back to his Stack Modus. He didn't even remember if he ever had a physical card for the Stack Modus. 'I guess I'll just have to deal with this one for the moment.' he thought to himself.

Now he just needed to open Dave's gift. Unfortunately it was on the opposite end of his Sylladex so he couldn't access it without picking up more worthless crap. Looking over at the cake on his dresser gave him a brilliant idea. He had finally found a use for all these stupid loitering pastries: dead weight. He captchalogued the two cakes on his dresser and on his bed. Grabbing something out of his demonology/comedy chest at random he captchalogued his copy of "Wise Guy" by Mike Caveney, causing the towel to be ejected from his sylladex and land on his head. He angerly ripped the towel off of his head bunched it up into a tight ball and threw it as hard as he could across the room. Next he captchalogued his rune covered solid iron shackles, expelling his father's PDA like a bullet. It busted through his window and landed out in the front yard. "DAMN IT!" John raged. He punched his wall as hard as he could out of shear frustration and his fist went all the way through and out the other side, leaving a massive splintered hole in his wall that was currently filled by his arm. Growing even more annoyed, john pulled his arm free and glared at the small scrapes and lacerations that were covered his fist and forearm. Fortunately they were all pretty much superficial so he wouldn't need to bandage his arm or get any stitches, but that didn't make it any less irritating. He picked the balled up towel up off the floor, unbunched it, and used it to wipe the dust and the small amount of blood off of his hand and arm.

At least he could finally access Dave's gift. Unfortunately, it was taped shut. His finger slipped and he captchalogued the towel again causing Dave's gift to be ejected from his sylladex and hit him in the head. Without thinking he re-captchalogued the red box causing a cake to be ejected from his sylladex, which he just barely managed to dodge. Now he needed to get the stupid box BACK to the bottom of his sylladex so he could access it. Not knowing what else to do, he captchalogued four shards of glass and quickly jumped for cover as the last cake, his copy of "Wise Guy", his occult iron shackles, and the towel were ejected. Now that his cards were packed with glass, he probably wasn't going to captchalogue anything else any time soon. Still, at some point he was going to have to go get his stuff and his dad's PDA back before he forgot.

Finally able to access both his knife and the red package, he used the blade to cut through the tape and opened the box. Reaching in, he pulled out a dirty looking stuffed rabbit that was much like the one held hostage briefly by Malkovich's Cyrus "The Virus" while taunting hard-luck protagonist Cameron Poe. And strikingly similar to the one scooped up from the soot of a burning Vegas strip by Cage's Poe and offered to his daughter, a gesture symbolic of a tattered exterior surrounding a heart of gold. Poe wasn't much to look at. But he was a good man. But no, it was not merely LIKE that bunny. According to the note of authenticity that came with it, it was the very same bunny! This was so awesome!

With a small smile on his face, under his helmet, he walked back over to his computer to check the status of the SBURB beta. The window now read, "A SBURB host user is attempting to connect with you. Client has established connection with host. Press [ENTER] when ready." The Pesterchum window was also flashing, so he clicked on it to check his messages. Rose was trying to start a voice call with him but had left a couple messages in chat as well.

- tentacleTherapist [TT] began pestering ghastlyThrasher [GT] at 17:08 -

TT: It looks like you managed to retrieve the beta. Excellent.

TT: I'm going to try to connect.

John accepted the voice call and said, "Fine by me, but I just got the most awesome present! Well... the most awesome next to my new sawed off shotgun, anyways."

"The rabbit?" Rose inquired.

"Yes! It's so cool!" John exclaimed happily.

"I've heard tales of this wretched creature often. Its Homeric legend is practically ensconced in the fold of my personal mythology by now."

John looked at the computer in confusion. "Uh... What?"

Rose chuckled to herself. "Why don't we focus on the matter at hand?"

"Oh, the game. Alright. Um, I don't really know how this works. What am I even looking at here?"

"You're running the client application. I am running the server, so I am the host user. I have established a connection with you. This is sufficient for us to play the game."

"Oh, cool then."

"Why don't we get started?"

John pressed [ENTER] and a fancy loading screen filled his monitor while rather generic sounding music played. When it was over the screen shifted to a black screen displaying SBURB in green text before returning to his desktop, confusing him. Suddenly a cursor in the shape of the SBURB logo appeared in the middle of his room. This startled John who had not been expecting this. He swiveled around in his chair and watched as the cursor hovered over to his demonology/comedy chest and picked it up, revealing a sylladex card that was hidden beneath the chest, before they both vanished seemingly into thin air. He heard a thunk and some scraping sounds coming from the roof above him.

"WHOA!" John exclaimed as all of this happened. Turning back to his computer he asked. "Okay, I'm just going to assume that was you, Rose. So um... What are you doing?"

"Sorry. I'm just getting a feel for the controls." Rose apologized, sounding slightly distracted.

"Er... Is my demonology chest on the roof now?" John asked uncertainly.

"Yes." Rose confirmed.

"Fuck..."

"I will try to be more careful next time." She assured him.

John stood up and walked over to go get the card that had been hidden under his chest. It was apparently the missing card for his Stack Fetch Modus. He quickly reapplied it to his Sylladex. Now he could switch between his stack and queue modus any time he wanted. That certainly would have come in handy earlier!

He heard his dad's car pulling out of the driveway. He was probably leaving again to go get more baking supplies. John was relieved to have the house to himself again, even if it was only for a few minutes. He just hoped his dad wouldn't notice his demonology chest on the roof. Or all the shit his sylladex launched out his window, for that matter.

Suddenly having an idea John walked over to his computer and asked, "Hey, Rose, do you think you could do me a favor? Could you grab all that stuff outside my broken window and bring it in for me? I would really appreciate it."

"I'll give it a shot." She responded casually.

John smiled under his helmet. "Thanks!"

Rose was silent for a moment but eventually said, "No luck. It appears to be out of range. I'm guessing it is too far away from you, the "player"."

John sighed in disappointment. "Damn it..."

The SBURB cursor appeared again and hovered towards John. He immediately started trying to avoid it. After Rose finally seemed to get tired of trying to chase him through his room, the cursor instead hovered over towards the dirty stuffed rabbit sitting on his bed and picked it up. It then dropped it back into the box it arrived in. John smirked and chuckled slightly at the reference.

The cursor then disappeared again and after a moment the corner of his room suddenly expanded. A moment later a giant Lathe suddenly appeared inside the newly expanded area. John walked over and examined it curiously. he had no idea what this thing was for or why Rose put it here, but it certainly looked cool.

He heard Rose talking and went back over to his computer so he could hear her better.

"It seems expanding the dimensions of your room cost us some "Build Grist", but deploying the lathe did not appear to incur any expense. It looks like certain objects are freebies, probably to help you set up the game." She explained sounding somewhat intrigued.

"Alright... Well, what do they do?" John asked, looking back over his shoulder towards the lathe that was now sitting in his room.

"I think it's up to you to find out. All I can do is drop stuff in your house, and move it around, apparently."

"How do i move stuff around or are you the only one that's able to?"

"I don't think you can as the client. You will need to install the server application. You should have received both in separate envelopes. I am running both on my computer right now." She informed him.

John squinted and shook his head in confusion. "What?"

"Did you get another envelope in the mail?"

"No."

"Once you install the server and establish a connection, I'm sure you will be able to manipulate my environment in the same manner. Are you sure you didn't get it?"

"Oh shit, I just remembered... I think it might be in my dad's car, but he just left to go buy more baking supplies. Damn..." John said, slightly disapointed by this.

"Well now that your room is bigger, why don't you move to the far corner? It will extend the range of the cursor, and I can reach the items. Which... you threw out the window for some reason?" She said in a slightly concerned tone.

"Ok, if you think that will work." John shrugged.

"What have you been doing in here all afternoon, anyway? Your room is an absolute wreck..."

"Ugh, I was fighting my retarded fucking sylladex! This thing is complete demonic garbage!" John growled in frustration. Taking a deep breath to calm down he asked, "Anyways, what modus do you use?"

"Oh, I like to use trees."

John grimaced at that. "Yikes. That sounds really fucking awkward."

"It's not exceptionally practical." Rose admitted. "But I think they are elegant."

"Well it can't be any worse then mine, I guess." John huffed as he started walking over to the corner of his room as Rose told him to. After a moment his copy of "Wise Guy" and his dad's PDA appeared on the ground in the middle of the expanded part of his room. He walked over and picked up his dad's PDA, switching back to his Stack Modus so it was readily accessible. The interface was oddly sterile. There weren't any weird harlequin wall papers like he had been expecting. The Serious Business application was open. It would appear that his dad uses it to keep tabs on various acquaintances... his fellow street performers, maybe? John found this strange but didn't dwell on it. Thinking it might be useful, he proceeded to install Pesterchum on the PDA. Just as he finished installing it and was logging into his account, he felt the ground shake twice.

Not sure what was going on, he went over to his computer while he finished logging into his Pesterchum account on his PDA and asked, "Rose, why is the floor shaking? Are you dropping more stuff in my house?"

"Yes. Two more large gizmos." She confirmed, once again sounding somewhat distracted.

"That's fine, I guess. Just try to make sure they aren't in the way and please try not to break anything if you can avoid it. My evil fucking Sylladex does enough of that on its own." John stated as he finally finished logging into his Pesterchum account on the PDA and switched the voice call from his computer to the PDA. "So, what's with all these big contraptions anyways?"

"If I had to guess, they appear to facilitate a sort of system involving punch card-based alchemy." Rose responded, sounding fascinated.

"Okay... To what end? I mean, what are we even supposed to be doing in this game?" He asked while walking out of his room and into the hall.

"That remains to be seen. Maybe you should go investigate?" Rose suggested.

"Fair enough." John shrugged as he walked out onto the balcony. "So, I'm at the balcony right now. Oh, and I'm talking to you through my dad's PDA, by the way."

"The one you threw into the yard?" Rose inquired.

"No. The one my Sylladex launched like a fucking bullet out the window. I'm telling you this thing is fucking possessed!"

"What were you doing with it in the first place? I am not sensing a lot of regard for the personal property of others. Is this how your pent-up frustration with your father manifests itself?" Rose asked in the tone she always used when trying to psychoanalyze people.

"What? No. I take all that out on my punching bag in the front yard. Those were all accidents caused by my evil fucking Sylladex. Please stop trying to psychoanalyze me." John politely requested.

"Your bathroom is a mess. Did you do that too?"

John frowned and took a deep breath. "Rose... This isn't cool. Please stop."

"There's a cake in the toilet." She stated, sounding extremely confused.

"Yeah. Like I said, my Sylladex is an evil possessed piece of shit! Your point?" He growled in annoyance.

"I'm tempted to clean it up for you."

"You know what? Fine by me. If that will satisfy your OCD then who am I to stop you? You can go right ahead!" John stated, crossing his arms. "Anyway..." He muttered to himself, shaking his head. "While you do that, I'm going to have a look at this enormous platform thing you put on the balcony."

Looking around the entire thing, he couldn't find any controls or anything else that looked particularly important. Once he exhausted all other possibilities, he considered just standing on it but having had more then a few accidents with machinery he knew little to nothing about in the past when he first started getting into mechanics, he quickly thought better of it. The last thing he needed was to risk losing a limb or something, especially when his dad wasn't there to drive him to the hospital if he did infact lose a limb.

Suddenly he heard a loud noise from inside the house causing him to spin around and raise his fists on reflex. "Whoops." Rose's voice said through the PDA.

Slightly worried by this John asked, "What happened? What as that noise? Should I go investigate? Is someone breaking in? Is it Demons?! Do I need to get ready for a fight?!"

"No, I have it under control. I just made a simple mistake, but I'm dealing with it. No one is breaking in, demonic in nature or otherwise, so you aren't going to have to fight anyone. Just calm down, John." She responded placatingly.

John lowered his fists and frowned, slightly disappointed that he wasn't going to get to beat any demons into a bloody pulp, and headed back inside to investigate anyways. He headed straight for the bathroom since that's where he thought he heard the noise come from. Walking inside he was immediately greeted by a giant hole in the ground where the toilet use to be and a busted pipe spraying water. Looking down through it, he saw into the Utility Room where a sledge hammer was leaning against the wall and an unused strife specibus was laying on the ground next to it. Clenching his fists and gritting his teeth, John closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths in an attempt to force himself to calm down. "Rose..." He said in a dangerously calm voice. "Please tell me exactly what I'm looking at here."

"I think I can patch it up. Just give me a little space. Why don't you go have a look at the Cruxtruder?" Rose suggested.

Calming down significantly after hearing that she should be able to fix it, John huffed and rubbed the sides of his head in an attempt to ease the headache starting to form in his skull. "Fine... What the hell is a cruxtruder and where can I find it?"

"It's the thing I put in your living room. I don't know what it does."

Nodding John dropped down through the hole, estimating that this was a much faster way to get to his living room then by simply using the stairs. Landing on a washing machine, he climbed down and picked up the unused Strife Specibus and added it to his Strife Portfolio, deciding to allocate a Kind Abstrata to it later, and was about to captchalogue the sledgehammer when his Pesterchum notification went off on his Dad's PDA. Muting the voice call with Rose, he checked his messages.

- gardenGnostic [GG] began pestering ghastlyThrasher [GT] at 17:25 -

GG: john did you get my package?

GT: oh hey, Jade!

GT: no, not yet.

GG: darn! are you sure? it was in a green box...

GT: oh!

GT: yeah actually, but it is in my dad's car and he's at the store.

GT: he should be back soon, though.

GG: great! so what are you up to today?

GT: you mean other then fighting with my evil fucking sylladex? mainly this sburb stuff.

GT: Rose is currently wrecking my house.

GG: lol!

GG: whats sburb?

GT: oh, it is this game.

GT: it's ok i guess. i'm still figuring it out.

GG: whoa what was that?

GT: what was what? are you alright?

GG: there was a loud noise outside my house!

GG: it sounded like an explosion!

GT: holy shit, are you serious?!

GG: i will go outside and look...

GT: alright but just be careful, ok?

GG: i will! :)

- gardenGnostic [GG] ceased pestering ghastlyThrasher [GT] at 17:28 -

Unmuting his call with Rose, John finally captchalogued the sledgehammer, causing a shard of glass to be ejected from his sylladex, and made his way to the living room. As soon as he walked in he immediately spotted the machine Rose was talking about sitting in front of his front door. Grimacing and slapping a palm against his forehead, John walked over to the Cruxtruder and growled, "Rose, you do realize you put this thing in front of the front door right?"

"There's a front door there?" Rose asked, sounding somewhat surprised.

John's eye twitched. "Yes, and this thing is currently completely blocking it!" He snapped, trying his best not to sound too angry since she apparently didn't realize this when she put it there.

"Oh, I didn't see it. I just thought it fit nicely into that groove."

John shook his head in exasperation. "Fine... I get it... So, do you at least know what I'm supposed to do with this thing?" He waited for a moment but she didn't respond. "Hello? Rose? What are you doing up there now?"

There was another loud noise and he heard Rose say, "Oh fuck."

John grit his teeth and tried to ignore it, fully realizing that more of his house was probably being destroyed. Instead he attempted to turn the wheel on the Cruxtruder. When he did something seemed to be pushing up from underneath the lid but he wasn't strong enough to make the lid come off.

Suddenly he heard a loud BANG from behind him. Whirling around he saw his bathtub laying at the top of the stairs with another part of the bathroom floor broken off underneath it. "ROSE! What the fuck?! Why the hell is my fucking bathtub laying on the stairs?!" He growled furiously.

"Sorry." She said through the PDA after reestablishing her internet connection. "I keep losing the wireless signal. Must be the weather. I would look for a stronger signal in another part of the house, but I'd rather not risk an encounter with my mother. I battled through her cloud of gin and derision once already this evening."

John grimaced and said, "Fine. Look, Rose, I'm trying my best to be reasonable and to not get too mad since you're my friend and I know you didn't mean to break anything, plus it would be somewhat hypocritical of me if I did. Just... earlier you said you could fix this stuff, so I would really appreciate it if you did."

"Alright, John. I'll try my best." She said apologetically.

"Thank you." He stated before dragging a small table he could use as a step stool over to the Cruxtruder and climbing on top. Taking out the sledgehammer he had captchalogued earlier, he raised it over his head and swung it down towards the cap of the Cruxtruder as hard as he could in an attempt to knock it loose. As soon as the hammer impacted the cap there was a bright flash of nightmarish purple light causing John to jump off the table he was using as a step stool, put away his sledgehammer, and take out his empty shotgun in preparation for a fight. The cap launched off the Cruxtruder and landed perfectly on the table John had been standing on and a strange flashing purple orb floated up out of the now opened Cruxtruder as a timer began counting down on the Cruxtruder itself.

The orb didn't look like any demon John was familiar with causing him relax a bit. Not sensing any immediate danger he put his sawed off shotgun away and asked, "What is this thing? Also, what is that clock counting down to?"

"I've been looking at the GameFAQ walkthroughs to figure some of this stuff out. Hold on while I read further." Rose told him.

"Okay." He stated, not taking his eyes off the strange floating orb.

"All of these walkthroughs are extremely short. None progress much further than this point."

"Hm... It is a new game." John shrugged, not sure what to make of that information.

"True. Now that the lid is off, you will need to extrude some "Cruxite"." Rose explained.

John walked up to it and turned the wheel again. A large purple cylinder popped out and landed perfectly in the center of the Cruxtruder's cap which John then captchalogued.

"I feel like we should be hurrying. That countdown is making me nervous." Rose stated through the PDA, still able to talk to him through the voice call even though John could not directly access it while it was trapped under the Cruxite in his Sylladex. "It looks like you are going to need this card too." Suddenly what looked like a captchalogue card full of holes with a picture depicting a nightmarish purple demonic skull that resembled the severed head of a Baalgar demon, which were supposed to be extinct according to John's demonology book, appeared in the middle of the floor between the doors to the kitchen and study. John captchalogued it, launching a shard of glass from his sylladex which cut part of the harlequin doll's hat off. Deciding he may as well get rid of all the glass in his sylladex which would also allow him to access his dad's PDA again in case he needed to, he captchalogued two of his father's fanciful harlequin statues ejecting the final two glass shards one of which cut through the side of the harlequin doll where one of the fake arms he had attached to it had fallen off while the other sliced through one of its eyes.

The entire time he had done this, the floating purple orb had followed him around and was emitting noise that sounded like static. "This orb thing keeps following me around and hissing at me. " He stated, starting to become annoyed with it.

"That is probably the "Kernelsprite". It apparently needs to be "prototyped". Twice, actually. Whatever the hell that means. These walkthroughs are horrendously written." She explained, sounding vaguely frustrated herself.

"Alright. Well, you're the one with the cursor so just do whatever you think is necessary. Also, please remember to fix my bathroom."

The cursor appeared and picked up the maimed harlequin before dragging it over and dropping it into the Kernelsprite. It now looked like a floating harlequin head that was missing an eye with a floating arm. It was no longer emitting static but had started emitting a dial up tone instead. "I still can't understand this thing." John stated, scowling at the noises it was making.

"That was only "Tier One Prototyping". There is still another tier to the prototyping process. Which for all we know merely advances this entity through increasingly esoteric states of linguistics." Rose informed him.

"We don't have time for this, the clock is ticking. I'm going upstairs to the thing on the balcony."

"The alchemiter?" She inquired.

John rolled his eyes as he started walking up the stairs. "Yeah, sure. The alchemy-whatever."

"Try to learn the lingo." Rose chided.

The Kernelsprite followed him upstairs he attempted to ignore it as he looked for a slot on the alchemiter where he could use the prepunched card. Unsuccessful, he captchalogued the telescope from its tripod to push the cruxite to the last card so he could access it. Unfortunately this jettisoned the PDA into the yard, over the neighbor's fence. John frowned and cursed mentally but set the cruxite down on the weird pattern on the alchemiter's small pedestal. Suddenly the large mechanical arm moved and began to scan the cruxite dowel with a laser.

He set the alchemiter to cast three perfectly generic objects for some reason, expending a total of six units of build grist. Three green cubes appeared in the center of the alchemiter. Unfortunately they appeared to be completely useless. 'What a waste!' He thought to himself. Then, out of the corner of his eye he noticed something in the sky.

The Kernelsprite started acting particularly agitated about whatever it was, which worried John. As such he used the telescope to inspect the sky. "Oh FUCK!" He exclaimed as he saw a giant meteorite heading straight for him. He immediately turned and began sprinting as fast as he could back inside to his room. He immediately sat back down at his computer and opened up his Pesterchum messages in basic chat.

TT: I'm working on the bathroom.

TT: But we are running low on Build Grist.

GT: that's great, thank you, but there's more important shit going on, like the fact there's a fucking meteor heading right for my house!

TT: I see.

TT: Do you suppose it has anything to do with the game?

GT: i don't fucking know! what do i do?!

TT: I think it's very likely.

TT: The walkthroughs vaguely suggest an impending threat before they end.

TT: The already poorly constructed sentences become even more curt and ambiguous.

TT: As if written hastily and with a sense of alarm.

TT: Actually, their dedication to updating the walkthrough under such circumstances is admirable.

GT: sorry, but could you get to the point!? i don't have a lot of time here!

TT: If the meteor is a game construct, I think the only thing to do is to proceed, and try to solve the dilemma on the game's terms.

TT: Try using the lathe.

TT: It says you can use the card on it, but isn't more specific than that.

GT: ok i'll do that.

TT: Really, it is a labor to read this drivel.

TT: If I read any more my brain will need to be spoon-fed from a jar.

TT: While it blows spit bubbles in a highchair.

TT: I think I will write my own walkthrough.

TT: That is, after we make sure you don't die.

- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering ghastlyThrasher [GT] at 17:34 -

TG: i heard you got the box

TG: i hope you appreciate my heroic fatherly perseverance in getting it to you

TG: in my rough and tumble dirty wifebeaterly sort of way

TG: also i hope you appreciate how many no-talent douches had their mitts on that bunny before you

TG: its like a grubby baton in some huge douchebag marathon

TG: hey where are you

GT: yeah, the bunny was cool, but i don't have time to talk. i'm playing sburb and absolutely everything is going to hell!

GT: Rose is breaking everything in my house.

TG: dude i told you to steer clear of that game

TG: and for that matter you should probably wash your hands of flighty broads and their snarky horseshit altogether

GT: and now there's a meteor AN ACTUAL FUCKING METEOR IN THE GOD DAMN SKY THAT'S HEADING RIGHT THE FUCK FOR ME!

TG: oh man

TG: how big is it

GT: all I know is that it's big enough to fucking kill me!

GT: look, i gotta go! we'll talk later if i am still alive!

With that John rushed over to the lathe and slipped the prepunched card inside the slot. The tool arm deployed a configuration of chisels. Now he just needed something to lathe. He remembered the cruxite dowel he left on the alchemiter and rushed out of his room, cursing his lack of foresight. He completely ignored his dad who was currently puzzling over the bathtub in his hallway as he sprinted for the balcony and retrieved the cruxite dowel before sprinting back to his room. He hurriedly clamped the cruxite into the lathe and activated it. The tool arm lowered and the dowel was shaped in a matter of moments. John retrieved the freshly carved cruxite totem and rushed back to his computer to message Rose.

GT: alright, i used the lathe to make this purple thing.

GT: now i take it back to the alchemiter again, right?

GT: hello?!

- tentacleTherapist [TT] is no longer connected! -

GT: SHIT!

He rushed to his door and tried to open it but it wouldn't budge. "Damn it, damn it, DAMN IT!" He cursed trying his best to bust down his door and failing. His eyes turned to the overly aggressive looking chainsaw hanging on his wall. He immediately rushed over and pulled it off the hooks that were holding it up and quickly allocated the chainsawkind abstratus to the unused Strife Specibus he had found earlier and his chainsaw was immediately moved to his strife deck. He then rushed over to his bed, reached underneath and grabbed the small canister of gasoline he kept hidden from his dad. Normally he wouldn't do this and especially not when his dad was home since he technically wasn't allowed to use his chainsaw, but right now he didn't give a shit if he got in trouble or not. He quickly opened the fuel tank of his chainsaw and unscrewed the top of the gasoline canister before dumping it in. It took half the gasoline canister to completely fill up the chainsaw's fuel tank.

Once it's tank was full, John closed them both back up, captchalogued the gasoline canister, and immediately rushed towards the door. With a loud roar reminiscent of an angry beast the brutal chainsaw came to life in John's hands and he began using it's overly large and aggressive teeth to cut the door to his room to pieces. In a matter of moments the door had fallen apart and John put the chainsaw away before rushing to the balcony as fast as he could and after knocking the perfectly generic objects off of the alchemiter he put the totem on the pedestal. The mechanical arm of the alchemiter scanned the totem and suddenly two nightmarish purple figures appeared in the middle of the platform.

One of the figures was a giant Baalgar demon that appeared to be doubled over in pain. The second figure was what looked to be a man wearing some sort of strange futuristic looking armor whom John immediately felt an odd unexplainable kinship with. The armored man grabbed the demon by its horns, twisted its neck until it broke, then proceeded to rip its head completely off its shoulders. He then turned and casually tossed the head to John and gave him a small nod before both he and the body of the demon vanished leaving only the severed head behind which rapidly decayed into a large demonic skull that was a similar nightmarish purple as the two figures had been.

The skull was huge and it was really heavy even by John's standards, actually having made him stumble back and nearly fall over when he was forced to catch it. He set the massive purple skull on the ground instinctively raised his foot and smashed it under his heavy boot with as much strength, hate, and anger as he could muster, just as he would do to absolutely anything demonic. As the bottom of his boot made contact with it, the demonic skull shattered like glass and in a flash of purple light everything changed.