Chapter VII. Stream & Flow
"So here's what will happen in this stream: you and Hades will introduce yourself briefly to my audience, and we will react to the meme in my Discord server together. I have my mods check for me beforehand, anything that shouldn't appear in a stream was removed. Any question?"
On the afternoon of the week after their breakfast meeting, Jafar explained his streaming plan to the two.
Jafar asked Frollo to leave all his guns in the bedroom an hour ago-he even asked him to make a list of his firearms and count them together just to ensure there would be no guns in today's stream.
Hades agreed to do the stream, but not after asking "Did your psycho dormmate say yes?", which honestly bothered Jafar-the last time he saw Hades and Frollo, Frollo made the most passive-aggressive death threat he'd ever seen. He just didn't get why Hades seemed to have a strange fondness for Frollo.
Like for example, asking Frollo to deliver the message, asking him to bring Frollo to the breakfast meeting, and now asking Frollo whether he would join the reaction stream.
He shouldn't feel jealous toward Frollo just for Hades' "affection", it was weird and...just weird. But he did.
"I would just say I am your dormmate."
"...Uh, that would work, but don't you want to spice it up? Make it more interesting?" Jafar tried to guide Frollo to come up with a more interesting introduction-a more interesting introduction without any dark humours of his would be excellent.
"Um, I am Frollo. I brought a gun to Jafar's stream because I thought his life was in danger...and...um, I like reading the Bible in my free time..." waiting for Frollo to spit out something "stream-appropriate" is like waiting for an old printer to produce a pile of paperwork, Jafar thought to himself. He tried his best not to facepalm.
"Do I even need to introduce myself?" Hades asked and crossed his arms, "Like 'hey name Hades, how are you doing, hope everyone living their best life', something like that?"
"Whatever thing you want, dude. At least you know what not to say in a stream." Jafar rolled his eyes. Then he gestured the two to move forward to the sight of the camera, he would start the stream soon.
"Starting the stream~"
Jafar briefly explained the stream's purpose and introduced Hades and Frollo to his audience. The chat was in total chaos as the fans saw the two, one of whom was a walking meme, and one of whom was a returning favourite.
-Damn, why do the fans focus so much on these two bozos instead?
"Buckle up, it would be a bumpy ride," said Jafar, "Are you two ready?"
"LET'S GOOOO!" Hades clapped his hands and yelled, which clearly shocked Frollo, as the ex-soldier almost stood up from his chair.
"Oh, Frollo, please tolerate us for like, I don't know, 2 hours? We will be like hyper-energetic children in front of the camera because, you know, audiences seem to like us that way? Right, chat?" said Hades unapologetically.
"...I prefer your murder and suicide jokes off-camera," Frollo replied without a blink, to which Hades reacted with hysterical laughter.
"FROLLO STOP PLEASE I DON'T WANT TO BE DEMONETIZED AGAIN-" Jafar had it enough.
The first meme into their sight was a photoshop from a scene in an apocalypse movie, in which the creator of the meme slapped the text "WHERE'S HADES?" on the crowd of zombies piling up against a wall.
"I'm so sorry I left but hey, here I am! Ta-da!" Hades said cheerfully, his hands raised next to his face and shaking like handbells as he said so, "Blame Jafar because working with him gave me too much money. So I decided I would rather retire in my mansion or else I might die from burnout before I could ever spend all those fortune."
"Oh...so this is 'meme'...trying to say something light-hearted in the form of pictures?" a pondering Frollo asked, he seemed to be a bit confused still.
"'Meme' has many forms, but pictures are one of them," Jafar replied, "You know, this channel is now full of you two, I almost forget this is my own Discord server."
"To be fair, this meme is about YOUR chat in the stream-it just happened to have something to do with me. So hey, don't be so grim, you still play a role here." Hades gestured to the screen.
After a few Hades-related memes, Jafar encountered a Frollo-related one finally, the notorious "Frollo holding a Nerf gun" was on the screen.
"Hey, you know I went to my local supermarket after you asked me to do this stream," Hades searched in his package, "I just want to let you know, this was in the toys session, I had to ask the employee the direction, and it was a total humiliation."
Then Hades held an exact same model of Nerf gun in the meme, pointing at an unfazed Frollo.
"May I take a look?" Frollo asked gently, then Hades handed him the Nerf gun. He held the gun in his arms like holding a newborn-It was about two and a half feet long and had an unrealistically huge golden front barrel. The majority of the furniture was scarlet, but not the black grip.
-How long is Frollo going to appreciate the Nerf gun? Does he realize we are recording? Jafar thought to himself, as the chat was still in uproar over the fact that Hades really bought a Nerf gun to the stream.
"It's impossible to hold this kind of gun like a pistol-like me in the meme," Frollo returned the Nerf gun to Hades and said, "The design looked like a shotgun but it would be too heavy to carry if it has such a huge front barrel."
"Bruh...the creator of the meme had to use a big enough Nerf gun to censor your real gun, why are you complaining about the realism of the meme…?" Jafar realized that he was quivering when interrupting Frollo.
"So me holding a real gun into the stream would get you demonetized, but not Hades with a Nerf gun," Frollo asked with his confession booth mask on. Jafar tried NOT to detect any other hints of Frollo's emotions in this question, as he then realized that Frollo might feel offended by his comments earlier, "What's the difference in that?"
"Well, you could deal any real harm to people if you're holding a Nerf gun, also Nerf gun is hilarious, hey." Hades shook his Nerf gun and shrugged.
"A Nerf gun COULD deal real harm if I aim at one's eyes," Frollo answered with his deadpan tone like he was reading a medical examination report rather than having a dialogue, "A human is far more fragile than you think."
"Alright, so Frollo, what do you think about this meme?" Jafar tried to not let the conversation spiral into something violent, "Do you know we might go through a lot of these next?"
"...Um. I hope whoever made this realizes one thing." Frollo blinked as he spoke.
"And what's that one thing?" Jafar asked, not daring to imagine the answer. He felt like he could feel related to the one who opened Pandora's Box a lot more.
"There are many ways to spend one's free time-some drink alcohol, some read their favourite books, most just chase the connection they would never get in a bar or a ballroom," Frollo looked into Jafar's eyes, which made the whole situation slightly better as Frollo was not looking into the camera when Frollo spat out those lines:
"I hope the creator of this meme could realize that there's no wrong way to spend your life, just the worse ones."
Two hours after the meme review stream, Jafar, Hades, and Frollo were in the parlour of Hades' mansion, as Jafar leaned on the wall watching the other two afar.
Hades stood behind Frollo, as Frollo's fingers danced effortlessly across the ebony and ivory keys of the grand piano. He knew nothing about music, as the piano in the parlour was just another decoration in this hollow mansion. The only thing he understood was the emotions in the haunting melody, filling every nook and cranny in the mansion with its notes.
Even then, Hades thought he might misunderstand Frollo in this language-less language-music. So he stared at the reflection of Frollo on the piano, but the distorted figure on the dark surface was too preoccupied to look back at Hades.
Knowing the sorrowful melody was the only language spoken in this parlour now, Hades chose to listen with every fibre of him. He had no professional knowledge of music whatsoever, but he did know it requires both hands to play the piano-that was the fact evoking his discovery of the duality resonating within each keystroke. He heard a part of the symphony climbing higher; Another part plummeted into an abyss. The piece unfolded with meticulous precision, displaying these contrasting forces dwelling within the human heart.
Until Frollo abruptly stopped, sending the mansion back to silence.
"...What? What's wrong?" Hades asked. As a casual music enjoyer, he really hated it when the engaging music suddenly stopped.
"I just misplayed a note." Frollo turned his back and stood up.
"I didn't notice AT ALL. What? Just go on then! You're like the kind of person who will erase their whole homework just because they think their handwriting is a bit off today!" Hades rolled his eyes and shook his hands above his towered blue hair, "Do you know it's uncool to stop a song suddenly?"
"I did erase the whole homework once for that particular reason when I was 9..." Frollo stared at the ground, he looked a bit hurt.
"Frollo might just be hungry and tired, just let him be." Jafar tried to ease the tension between the two, "Hades, we're here only because you said 'I've already called my private chef during the break, dinner at my house, chop chop' after the stream. May I ask NICELY-where's the dinner now?"
"Dinner was ready like, what? 3 minutes ago," Hades shrugged and side-eyed Jafar, "I turned my cellphone to vibrate mode and muted every single person on earth who is not my private chef. I just...I just want to enjoy the music, OK? Even if the whole USA troop stormed into my mansion RIHGT IN THIS INSTANCE, they wouldn't stop me from enjoying the music. Am I understood?"
Jafar really wanted to say something clever to fight back like they used to, but he couldn't- he felt like Hades was genuinely upset with him now.
"Frollo, do you want to eat now or continue the music?" Hades turned his head to a seemingly brooding Frollo, who was still standing next to the piano, "Quick, it's not like I am asking you quantum mechanism now."
"Uh...dinner, I guess," Frollo said, his whisper barely heard by Jafar.
Upon hearing the answer, Hades just sighed and headed toward the doorway, with Jafar and Frollo following. Frollo stopped by the doorstep just to turn off all the lights of the parlour.