I'm really liking how this story is turning out, and I really hope that you all are, too! So keep on reading- this is where it starts to get good!
The house was all quiet, when Butters' parents arrived at home. Rain fell steadily outside their home, and it had just started not less than an hour previous.
Not even thinking about Butters at first, the pair shook the raindrops off their raincoats, scattering the front of the foyer with wetness. The two shed their coats, letting them drop where they stood. The coats hit the floor with a wet smack, but the Stotches made no effort to pick them up.
Mr. Stotch whispered something into his wife's ear, and she flushed to her roots, giggling girlishly. He leaned in to whisper something else, but she silenced him with one finger to his lips.
She motioned for him to follow her, and just about immediately, he knew what she wanted.
Walking over to her, he took her hand, firmly and surely. She smiled seductively at her husband, and he responded in kind. Slowly, they walked down the hallway to their room, no hurry in their steps.
They had no plans to sleep that night, and that was fine with the both of them; they'd planned ahead and both taken the following day off of work. The entire night was theirs and theirs alone.
As they passed Butters' room, Mrs. Stotch stopped.
"What is it, dear?" he asked.
She smiled. "Go on up to our room, love," she said sweetly "I'll be up in a second; I just want to say goodnight to Butters."
Mr. Stotch couldn't help but grin; here they were, about to share a very intimate moment with each other, on their thirteenth wedding anniversary, and his wife was still kind enough to think of their son.
It was just one of the many reasons he loved her so much.
Still smiling, he continued on down the hall, as Mrs. Stotch quietly cracked open Butters' bedroom door.
"Good night, Butters," she said, blowing a kiss through the opening in the doorframe. "Sleep tight, I love you."
No response came from the room, but she merely attributed that to the fact that Butters was already asleep. She only stood there for a moment longer, before she closed his door and walked away.
On a whim, she peered into the computer room, as well. Much to her surprise, the computer was off, the standby light not even flashing.
Mrs. Stotch smiled; her little Butters hadn't let her down. Closing the door, he headed to her room where her hubby was waiting for her, and raucous love-making was about to ensue.
As the two began to do the deed, neither even had an inkling of the danger that their son was about to be in.
Not even Butters himself knew…
---
"Oh, God…"
Butters' nausea was ever-increasing, as he continued to spin out of control. The white tunnel in which he found himself falling into, seemed to be endlessly stretched out.
He looked out ahead of him, trying to see whether the end of the tunnel was ahead of him. At the very least, he wanted to see something besides whiteness.
No such luck.
Butters groaned softly, the tuna burrito that he had eaten lunch beginning to come back to haunt him. He clenched his mouth shut tightly, trying to keep from losing the contents of his stomach.
At that point, it was really all he could think about.
"When will it end…?"
Not too far afterwards, as it turned out.
It was about a few minutes later (or something close to that), when Butters felt a suction on his body, the same one he'd felt when he was first sucked into the portal. Abruptly, he was flung forward, further into the vortex, hurtling at speeds far greater than any he'd ever experienced before.
After a period of time, Butters caught glimpses of some kind of end to the tunnel. He only caught bits and pieces of it, though, due to the fact that he was tumbling ass-end over teakettle, as he continued to travel along.
One final rush of speed, and Butters was spat out onto terra firma, the portal that he had just come out of closing behind him, leaving no trace that it had ever been there.
Butters lay on his side for a good five minutes, gasping for breath. Even though he'd done nothing but free-fall for the past God-knows-how-long, the trans-dimensional trip had sucked almost all the energy out of him.
He had no idea how long it would take him to recover, but somehow, he knew that the process would not be enjoyable.
A wave of nausea hit him suddenly, and Butters tightly shut his eyes, trying to hold his lunch down. The pressure kept building, though, and eventually it became more than Butters could bear.
With a great shudder, Butters vomited. Violently.
It took about a minute for him to expel all that he could from his body, but eventually it was over. Butters continued to lay on his side, panting from the exertion that his own body had just put him through.
This was pure agony.
---
Butters had no idea how long he'd lay there, before he decided that he felt well enough to try and sit up. He slowly did so, testing the limits of his young body, trying to see if he were able to withstand even that small stress of life.
He wasn't.
As he neared his upright position, another spasm racked his body, and he again began to vomit. There wasn't much left in the tank, though, and after a moment or two, he was reduced to dry-heaving.
It still didn't stop it from hurting like a bitch, though.
Tears unwillingly rose to Butters' eyes, as he looked down at his light blue shirt. At least none of the bile happened to land on him, personally.
It wasn't much of a consolation, but it was one nonetheless.
Thoughts began to flood Butters' mind: Where the hell is this place? What am I even doing here? Why do I-
His thoughts were interrupted, though, by a voice coming from in front of him, though it still sounded a bit far off: "Butters? Is that you?"
The voice sounded so familiar to him, but in his screwed-up state, he couldn't quite place where he'd heard it from before. He slowly looked up, fearing another nausea attack. It didn't come, though, and Butters finished readjusting his line of sight.
What he saw, absolutely floored him.
Directly in front of him, Kitty was walking towards him, her usual smile on her face. Upon closer inspection, though, Butters could see that her smile faltered every few steps, as though the closer she came to him, the less sure of herself she became.
She spoke again: "Is that you, Butters?"
Butters finally found his voice: "Y-yeah, it's me…" The words came out soft and raspy, and Butters immediately disliked the way they had come out.
What if she thought that was the way he talked all the time? What would happen between them, then?
It was hell on him.
As Butters watched Kitty walk closer to him, he noticed that, despite her periodically-faltering smile, she had a twinkle in her eye as she fixed her gaze intently on him.
She always had a gleam in her eye, in the game, but this one… It was different.
Butters couldn't quite put her finger on the exact reason, but he could sense it.
Kitty reached him and stood in front of him, looking down at him. For a moment, Butters couldn't meet her gaze, but eventually he worked up the courage to look up at her.
A look of concern was visible on her face.
"Are you alright?" Kitty asked. "You don't look so good…"
Butters wagged his head. "I'm fine…" he murmured. "Just a bit… messed up. From the ride over, you know."
To his surprise, Kitty looked to be sad about that.
"If there were any other way," Kitty responded a bit glumly, "we would have done it. But this was the only way we knew of, to get you here."
Kitty extended a paw, and Butters accepted it graciously. With one lithe movement, Kitty helped him up to his feet.
"If I may…" Butters started, then stopped shyly.
Kitty nodded, motioning for him to continue.
Butters looked into Kitty's eyes, nearly melting in the process. "What am I even doing here?"
"Didn't I tell you?" Kitty asked. "We need you to-"
"Save the world," Butters interrupted. "I know. But… why me? I'm just a little kid-"
"That may be true," Kitty replied, "but there's something special about you. I know it, I can feel it!"
Butters averted his gaze, looking now instead at the ground below him. The thoughts he was thinking now, flew right in the face of everything that his beloved Kitty had just told him.
And, truthfully, he was ashamed of it.
Finally, he found he could speak again: "I'm not special. Never have been, never-"
It was only then, that Butters noticed that at least one big thing was wrong with the world in which he found himself. He recognized the area of the forest in which he was at, but the lush green grass that had always been there before, was certainly not there now.
Rather, in its place, dead ground stood, charred black by some fury-hot force. Not a single blade of green grass now stood in the blackened sea that lay before, behind- all around them.
Butters gaped in awe at the scene of mass devastation that presented itself clearly to him. This was most certainly not the game world that Butters knew and loved so much.
What had happened to it? Was this even the same world?
"What…" Butters stammered, "what happened here? Why is this place like this?"
Kitty's saddened look deepened even further, and Butters was surprised to see tears beginning to form in the corners of her eyes.
"It's a very long story," Kitty said, barely above a whisper.
"I want to know," Butters replied. "If I need to be your savior, I need to know what happened, what we're going up against."
Besides, he added in his head, I'm not ready for us to split up yet…
Kitty smiled beautifully at him. "Well, if you really want to know…"
She took a deep breath, then began: "Did you know that the main island of the game isn't the only actual in-game area?"
This surprised him. "N-no, I didn't…" he stammered.
"Well, it isn't. There are other areas of the game, that aren't accessible to the PCs. (Author's Note: PCs = Player/Playable-Characters) Only the more powerful of the NPCs can go there. (AN: NPCs = Non- Playable/Non-Player Characters)
"One of the things that was going on in these NPC-only areas, was a convention of scientists, one of whom is our very own Badtz Maru, though he is but a young one when compared to some of these other scientists that we have.
"These scientists were attempting to do something that had never even been tried before, much less accomplished."
"What was that?" Butters asked in spite of himself.
"They made an elixir of life. If they had ingested it right then and there, they would have made themselves effectively immortal. That way, they could go into PC areas and not be killed by them if attacked, as many other NPCs are able to do. With this serum, their lifespan would have been indefinite."
"Then…" Butters asked, "what happened to it?"
"Well," Kitty continued, "in the end, they decided to hold off on taking it, in order to run some more tests on it. They wanted to be completely sure that the serum actually did what they wanted it to do.
"So, they began to test it on some of the local wildlife. Squirrels, birds- even some of the fish got tested on. And it all worked fine for them; the animals that got tested on and tagged for future observations lived far longer than their untested-on counterparts. In fact, so far as I know, most- if not all- of them are still alive today, even with the PCs attacking them constantly.
"So they decided to finally administer the serum to those amongst their own ranks."
Kitty looked over at Butters to make sure he hadn't gotten lost in all the information she was suddenly dumping on him. He hadn't; in fact, he seemed to be eagerly absorbing everything she had to say, and the look on his face proved it.
She found herself staring at him now, as she hadn't been able to before then. Seeing him like this, for the first time, she started to think of him more as a person than anything else.
Wow… she thought, he's really wanting to know all about this. I wonder if this is what he's like in the real world. And he's actually kinda cute, too. I'm surprised that-
Her reverie was interrupted by Butters' voice: "Are you okay?"
She snapped out of it. "I'm fine… just thinking."
Butters smiled, glad that she was okay. "So…what happened after they took the serum?"
Kitty sighed. "I wish I could tell you it was good… But, I can't.
"It turned out, that the serum reacted differently with their bodies, than it had with the animals that got tested on. It did give them the indefinite lifespan they had been hoping for- they had become just like any other NPC in any other video game.
"Just not in the way that they had expected."
Butters swallowed hard, and Kitty finished her thought: "Before it gave them the elongated life… It killed them first."
An ominous wind flowed between them, as Butters stood there dumbfounded, at what Kitty had just told him.
"They… died?" Butters asked. "But that means…" His mind started churning again. "They became- what are they called? The 'z' word-"
"Zombies," Kitty finished for him.
Again, Butters couldn't believe what he was hearing; zombies didn't exist, he thought.
Then again, this technically is a video game…
Just then, a thought occurred to Butters, and he voiced it aloud: "Hey, why haven't I seen this in the game before? I just played it…"
"Two weeks ago," Kitty finished his sentence for him. "And it was during your downtime that it happened."
Seeing the look on Butters' face, she quickly added: "Don't misunderstand me, Butters; you aren't to blame for this. There's nothing you, personally, could have done to prevent this."
This cheered Butters up. Slightly.
After a moment, Butters spoke again: "So, these… zombies… Where are they now?"
"Hiding, probably. They don't' like to come out before nightfall, for some reason."
Butters looked around him; night was quickly falling. Obviously, time in the game did not exactly correspond with time in the real world.
"Um… shouldn't we be finding shelter somewhere? Or are all the shacks gone, too?"
Kitty shook her head. "Right after they turned, they went on a rampage and destroyed everything they could, including most everything on the island. If there are any shelters left, I haven't been able to find them…"
Butters was about to respond, when a crackling sound entered his ears, far away but approaching rapidly. He tried to mask his fear, but his eyes betrayed him. Kitty obviously felt the same way Butters did- she didn't mask her fear very well, the innocent thing she was- and this oddly comforted Butters.
At least his apprehension was mutual.
Both Butters and Kitty turned to see the source of the noise, and it turned out to be exactly what Kitty had warned him about.
A horde of furry critters was rapidly approaching them. Butters could tell that at some point, they had been both cute and fuzzy, but now they were neither. Their fur had been matted down by the bodily fluids of the innocents they had killed, and lines of blood dripped down from their frothing, foamy mouths.
It was truly a sight to behold.
"Wh-what do we do?" Butters stammered.
"I don't know," Kitty replied, "but I always just run when this happens."
Butters whispered back, "Sounds like a plan."
Without even seeming to think about it, Butters grabbed Kitty's paw and held on tightly, as the two of them beat a path in the opposite direction, as their enemies bore down ever closer upon them.
If they thought they could somehow outrun the danger that they were facing… They were wrong.
The danger was all around them.
Bwahahaha! No more for now, but chapter three comes soon!