A/N: Well hello! So I've picked this story up again recently, and after leaving it sitting around with nothing but two chapters and prologue for an excruciatingly long time I thought I ought to say I fully intend to see it out to the end. Thanks for your patience and thank you for reading!
Also, worry not those that will worry (because I know at least one of you will)! "Wherefore" is used incorrectly on purpose. Crazy Hand does what he wants.
Chapter 4: Interrupting Forest – Day 3: Step 9
"Wherefore art thou, brother!" Crazy Hand called out. He zipped about through the woods, seeing nothing out of the ordinary, before coming across a pile of fallen trees. "MH?" The pile of trees groaned. Crazy Hand frowned. He engulfed the trees in a purple glow, and lifted them high up into the air. Forming a finger gun, he took aim at the suspended bunch of trees and shot powerful lasers at them, causing them to explode in a burst of sparks. "Heh," the left hand chuckled darkly. "You've just been terminated."
"Crazy…" Crazy Hand turned to the right hand that lay on the ground.
"You're not as flat as I expected!" he said cheerily. "I was gonna send you to Flat Zone."
"To what? Just help me up…"
"Sure thing!" Crazy Hand grabbed Master Hand and helped him off his back. "Have a tomato!" he said, shoving it at his brother, who peered at it skeptically. "Go on!" the left hand prompted, giving him a poke. Master Hand relented, deciding it wouldn't hurt to try it, and ate the tomato as only a hand can, perking up instantly. "Now doesn't that feel better?"
"What kind of tomato was that?" Master Hand asked, in awe of his newfound strength.
"Some kind of maximum tomato."
"Where'd you get it?"
"The tomato box fairy."
"Oh that's great, quite interestin—WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?" Crazy Hand cowered at his brother's rage.
"Whaddya mean?"
"What are all these trees doing here?" Master Hand asked in fury.
"I was just doing the next step!" Crazy Hand whimpered.
"Oh. Really?" Master Hand calmed down a little. "The next step was to plant trees?" He consulted World Creation 101, pausing at step 9. "That's not the next step, Crazy," he said bitterly, flipping through the steps. "Trees aren't added until step 11."
"Whaa? Then what's step 9?"
"We're supposed to be making the atmosphere," Master Hand said drily. "Now your trees are going to shrivel up and die because there's not enough air."
"Oh no! Not my beautiful trees!" Crazy Hand cried, immediately going up to hug one as best he could—grabbing it, essentially. Master Hand sighed.
"I guess it's fine…" he mumbled. "We can just do the other steps with the trees around." He began to float upward over the treetops. "I mean it's not like these trees are covering every inch of the—" He stared at the horizon in shock. Trees. Trees everywhere. Everywhere he turned, as far as the eye could see, were trees. And they were all oak. "Crazy, come up here."
Crazy Hand made his way up to his brother and looked around. "Isn't it pretty?"
"It's pretty full of trees. Please tell me the entire planet isn't covered in trees." The right hand was surprised to see his brother whip out the scanner and point it at the horizon.
"Calculating," the mechanical female voice said. It made two small beeps before stating in a heavy voice, "Entire planet is tree-covered."
"Great," Master Hand groaned.
"Isn't it though?" Crazy Hand beamed, missing his brother's sarcasm entirely.
"How?"
"How is it great?"
"How did you plant all these trees?" Master Hand asked. Although that question would work too…
"I used the Tree-a pet from the back of the book!" Crazy Hand took out a small terracotta ball covered in seeds. "You see all you gotta do is plant this little ball in the ground and add water, and it diffuses to sprout a whole forest! Except we added all that energy instead sooo." Master Hand regarded the ball with curiosity, quickly flipping to the back of the book to see for himself where it had come from: unsurprisingly, another blank page.
"Open says me," he recited as his brother had done earlier.
"Hey watch out! It's actually a—" There was a bright flash of light and Master Hand let out a girly scream as he was sucked into… "—a portal," Crazy Hand finished quietly.
Master Hand landed with a thud on the cold concrete ground. He lay there crossly, aching from hitting his back yet again in such a short time span, and refused to get up, wary that something else would fall on him if he tried. He did not, however, consider that staying there would result in his brother crashing into him from the portal above.
"Blue skidoo! I can too!" Crazy Hand beamed down at his brother. "You're getting squished a lot today, aren't you MH?"
"Ergh…"
Master Hand slowly arose, finding his footing and dusting his glove off slightly, before gazing at the room around him. He was in what appeared to be a strange library, with row after row of tall gray shelves. He wandered up the aisle in the direction his brother had gone, finding the manic hand by a shelf of those terracotta balls he had shown him earlier.
"You see, MH? This is where I got the Tree-a pet from," Crazy Hand announced proudly.
"Are they actually called Tree-a pets?" Master Hand searched for a label, finding one that said "Tropical/subtropical—broadleaf" at one end of the shelf.
"Nope. I just like to call them that," Crazy Hand said, moving on to another shelf.
"Why?" Master Hand asked as he followed him; this shelf was labeled "Temperate—broadleaf/mixed" instead.
"Cuz they're so cute!" the left hand gushed. "Doesn't it sound like a good name? 'Tree-a pet'? Oh this is where I got the other one, by the way."
Master Hand sighed. "That explains the oak trees."
"Yeah we really need more variety don't we?" Crazy Hand mused. "You've seen the other worlds. Heck some of them have talking trees. That walk."
"Crazy, I don't think that was an actual tree…" Master Hand told him. "And anyways we need to get rid of the trees we have now first."
"But you said they were going to shrivel up anyway."
"Oh, that's right," Master Hand nodded. "We might as well make the atmosphere first."
"You see, kids," Crazy Hand said, raising his index finger. "If it weren't for this random forest, this chapter would be called 'Creating the Atmosphere.' Creative isn't it? Matches the style of the other titles, too. Yeah the author is pretty special. And also overworked, but that's another story."
"Uh, Crazy?" Master Hand peered around the left hand to see what he was looking at. "Who are you talking to?"
"The audience," Crazy Hand told him proudly. Master Hand gave him a bored look.
"So how do we get out of here?" he asked, quickly changing the subject. Crazy Hand sighed. If only his brother knew about the wonders of the fourth wall.
He gestured at the portal on the ceiling. "Same way we got in," he answered.
"Ok then, let's go." Master Hand floated up towards the portal and back out into the forest. He rose up above the trees and turned to his left counterpart, who followed closely behind him, carrying the World Creation book. The left hand flipped to page 9 and started to read.
"'Step 9: Create the atmosphere.' Says here we have to use the provided 'globular etheric reaction implementation and encasement machination,'" Crazy Hand said. He stared down at the page blankly before decisively handing the book over to his brother. "You can do this step."
"What? Fine…" Master Hand read over the step for himself; once again the adjacent page was blank. "Open says me!" he commanded. A blinding white light flashed out at him, so bright he had to look away or risk losing his eyesight—
"What eyesight?"
Quiet, Crazy. I'm trying to make it sound dramatic.
"But we don't have eyes—"
Then how can you see?
Crazy Hand lifted a finger and started to speak, but frankly he didn't know how to answer that question.
As the light began to fade, Master Hand reached into the cavity on the page and took out—
"A bubble blower?" he asked, confused. He twirled the large stick between his forefinger and his thumb, Crazy Hand gazing at it in awe.
"It's so big and shiny," Crazy ogled. Indeed it was; the bubble blower wand was made of a bright sterling silver, and had the number 101 etched sideways on the handle. "Gimme!" Crazy Hand snatched the stick from the right hand and grasped it tightly.
"I take it you do want to do this step after all?" Master Hand asked with a hint of amusement. Crazy Hand nodded fervently. "Well ok then." He picked a glass vial up from inside the hollow; it was filled with a sparkling blue smoke—ether, according to a tiny label on the side. "This," he told Crazy, brandishing the bottle in from of him, "is what we use to make the atmosphere." Crazy Hand peered at the tiny vessel, then peered back at the large bubble blower in his hand. He snapped his fingers sassily.
"Nuh uh. This ain't never gonna fit in there."
Master Hand chuckled. "It doesn't need to. We can just pour it out." Crazy Hand took a thoughtful stance.
"I suppose we could do that," he muttered. "…OR we could just take the bottle…"
"Crazy! No swiping!" Master Hand cried as his brother snatched the bottle out of his grasp. "It's fragile!" Crazy Hand heaved an exasperated sigh as he held the bottle afloat next to the bubble wand; he knew what he was doing.
"As I was saying," he continued. "We take the bottle, open it up…" He popped off its cork and tossed it aside, much to Master Hand's dismay. "And do this!" With a flourish he poured the murky blue contents of the bottle into the ring of the bubble blower. "Ta da!"
"Oh wonderful. Now come over here so I can clap," Master Hand said sarcastically. The left hand started towards him. "Hey, hold on! I was being sarcastic!" he quickly exclaimed.
Yes, I know, Crazy Hand thought bitterly. He directed his attention to the bubble blower, the haze of blue ether swirling around in the ring of the wand. "I'll do this part now?" he asked after a moment, still staring into the wispy ether.
"Oh," Master Hand said. "Sure. Go ahead." He watched his left hand counterpart rise off the earth, bringing the silver bubble wand up with him, until he was too small to see anymore. Crazy seemed different, he thought. Like he was angry…with me. Maybe he was just being paranoid. Crazy's just being his same unpredictable self. That's all.
I'm Crazy Hand. Being random and chaotic is what I do. Crazy Hand peered down at the earth from space, twirling the bubble wand between his fingers. But I'm also the Hand of Destruction. One way or another, I have to destroy. He tightened his grip on the bubble wand. "But…" He flipped the wand into the air and caught it again. "I'll just save that for later!" Crazy beamed. "Right now I have to think of something cool to say…" He looked up at the text above him for a moment. "EGAD! That's right! We've referred to this bubble blower as a wand at least seven—well I guess eight now—times now! I've got the perfect thing…things! Things to say!" Exuberant, Crazy Hand pointed the wand ("Nine!" Crazy Hand counted.) down at the earth, taking his mark.
"Swish and flick! Bippity boppity boo!"
Crazy Hand sent his energy surging through the stick of the bubble wand ("Ten!"), forming the ether in its ring into a spherical shape—a large bubble that grew larger by the second. He cackled maniacally as the bubble grew to gigantic proportions, and soon it surrounded the entire earth in layers of sky, giving it a glowing halo of blue.
From his place on the treetops below, Master Hand stared in awe at the mass of blue that had spread above him. "It's so…" He wanted to say it was so blue, but for some reason he felt that the word had become overused as of late. "It's so airy," he remarked. Just as well; things were shaping out just fine. They were finally getting back on track. "We'll have this world finished in no time," Master Hand mused optimistically. "…Even with all these trees here." With a smile he conjured up a megaphone and directed it up at the sky. "CRAZY!" he bellowed up to his brother. "COME ON DOWN HERE!"
"OK!" he heard Crazy Hand holler back. "THE SHUTTLE'S COMING HOME!"
Ok, good, Master Hand thought. We'll just take a short break and then— "Did he just say shuttle?"
Well, of course, Master Hand. How else would you break through the earth's atmosphere?