Chapter 1

The Detective's Arrival

In the Traffic Monitoring Station, somewhere in the chicken nugget facility, Buttrugger and one of his employees, generically named Steve, looked at a computer screen. It revealed a dropship approaching the planet. Steve started taking a scan of the ship. While one of the pilots aboard confirmed their identification, a transmission came through from the other.

"Hey there, Steve," a male voice through the speaker. "I'm just calling because I wanted to ask whether I'm supposed to press this big red button or not."

Steve and Buttrugger looked at each other, confused. They were not aware of any such button on any ship. They didn't know anything about ship design.

The voice continued. "Because there's a really big red button that says, 'Do Not Push'."

The computer began calculating the ship's orbital insertion into the planet's atmosphere.

"But I don't know what happens when you push it, so I'm kinda curious. Should I push it, do you think?"

Buttrugger and Steve just shook their heads at the idiocy of the pilot. The ship was getting closer to the planet.

"Okay, I'm just gonna push it."

They both slapped their palms to their faces. Then in the bottom right corner of the screen, they saw video footage of the ship, which had somehow burst into flames as it was entering the atmosphere.

The pilot started panicking. "Oh no, the ship's on fire! Oh no!" He let out a scream just as the feed was cut and the visual footage disappeared.

There were a few seconds of silence before Steve spoke up. "Um, sir, their ship just exploded."

"Dammit," Buttrugger yelled. "Now who am I going to play Minecraft with?" His circle of friends with whom he played the video game Minecraft was now shortened to only two people. Now his live streams were gonna be worth practically nothing with only three people involved.

But he was quickly distracted by another dropship that flew by just outside the window. "Oh look, another ship. I wonder who's on there. Do you know who's on there?"

Steve shrugged. "I don't know who's on there."

A large door into the docks opened beneath the dropship as it hovered above it. It slowly and carefully lowered down through the doors.

The pilot spoke through the intercom. "Okay, guys, I'm gonna have to apologize for my parking job. I'm not that great. But I will do the best I can to not mess this up and crash the ship and kill us all. So just keep your seatbelts on until we land, and then—"

The pilot was just saying random words at this point while the ship rotated as to line up its entrance with the dock. The ship's door opened as a boarding ramp extended from the dock and attached to the ship.

Two male figures stepped out of the ship and walked side by side along the dock. One of them, named Elliot Swann, was a middle-aged man with a goatee and a bald head, but he had dark hair wherever hair remained. He was dressed in a suit and wore a pair of glasses on his face. The other man, named Jack Campbell, was older but had more of a headful of hair. He wore a military uniform, which showed how much more muscular he was than his friend. He carried what appeared to be a large laptop.

"Finally, we made it to The Chicken Nugget Farm," Elliot said to Jack. "This is the best place in the galaxy to get chicken nuggets. Have you had any before?"

"I can't say that I have," the older man said. "My dad owns a farm and he makes chicken nuggets all the time."

"Really?" the other man said, somewhat surprised. "Well, I think you're missing out because there are some great nuggets."

While they headed for the entrance, a third person stepped off the ship.

The passenger didn't have a name, even though he was the protagonist because when the YouTuber, yours truly, created the video, he forgot to come up with a name for him. He didn't even have any characters address the marine as anything else besides "buddy" or "man". So he will henceforth be referred to as "Marine" since that's what every other character calls him in the actual game. So there.

Marine looked around, feeling a little lost. He looked at his map, wondering if he might have read it wrong. He considered asking someone else for directions. The employee he talked to directed him towards the main entrance of the facility.

He entered the building and was greeted by a bland employee who sat behind a desk, immediately giving off the impression that he couldn't care less about his job. He could give Squidward Tentacles a run for his money. The man welcomed Marine so flatly, you wouldn't feel the slightest bump if you drove over him.

The employee looked at Marine with a deadpan expression. "I take it you're the guy who's here to investigate the disappearances of our chicken nuggets." He reached into a drawer on the desk and pulled out a small computer tablet. "Anyway, here, take my bank card." He placed it on the table. It blatantly displayed his banking information. "You can steal that if you want. I don't care. My life's a living hell being stuck in this place anyway, so I don't give a shit."

Marine silently stared in confusion as the man slid his chair to the computer and began typing. "Anyway… Oh, looks like my Skip-The-Dishes order is almost here, so you might as well be on your way." He pointed towards a door behind the desk. "Your boss is waiting for you down that hall, so see ya."

Still stunned by the bizarre encounter, Marine shook himself out of it and headed into the hallway. Being a detective, he had met a lot of different kinds of people, but no one quite like that guy. He hoped the rest of the employees would be twice as pleasant, at least.