(This won’t really make any sense if you haven’t read that post.)
Yes, I’m actually going to write a fanfiction based on this idea! I said I wasn’t, but I think through making the files and writing out the whole backstory stuff, I actually feel like I have some good ideas to make a story around it! It will probably take me forever to finish this, as I procrastinate like nobody’s business (who knows if I’ll finish this at all) but, hey, I’m gonna give it a go. I wrote this little part of a chapter just now, so I thought I’d stick it up here as a preview of things to come! Enjoy!
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The Skype chat loaded and Robin’s face appeared on the screen. “Hey Jack!” Robin said with a smile. “Hey…” Jack replied, trying to sound like nothing was wrong, “What’s up?” “I just got the files for your new video,” Robin said, “I didn’t know you were moving!” “Yeah it’s…it’s kinda of a last minute thing. I didn’t know this was happening either…I made that vlog literally a few minutes ago.” “Oh…” Robin said, “What’s going on? Do you need help?” “No, no, it’s fine!” Jack said quickly, “I’ve got it all sorted out. Everything’s fine!” Robin raise an eyebrow skeptically. “Alright…if you-“ BANG! The two men jumped in their seats at the noise. Jack turned to the door. You can’t leave those idiots alone for five minutes…Anti said in Jack’s mind.
Fuck…what have they done?! Jack thought, his heart rate speeding up.
“Um…what the hell was that?!” Robin said, bringing Jack out of his thoughts. “I’m sure it was nothing!” Jack stammered, his mind racing. Whatever the clones were doing, they’d end up alerting the neighbours, and then their position would be given away. He had to stop them. He had to- CRASH! “Fuck!” Jack cried, standing up. “Jack, what’s going on?!” Robin demanded, leaning close to the screen to try and see what was happening. Jack turned back to the computer. “I…I need to go. Give me a sec…” “Jack!” Robin said, “Jack, stop! What’s-“ Jack ignored his cries and ran down the stairs to the living room. He could hear shouting and banging, which only made him quicken his pace.
He opened the door and everything went silent.
The room was dark. As Jack’s eyes adjusted to the lack of light, he could see the lampshade was on the floor and the lightbulb was smashed. Jackaboy Man and Marvin were floating in the air, looks of terror on their faces. Chase and Schneeple was stood to the side, frozen in the fight they’d been having moments earlier; Schneeple had Chase’s nerf gun in his hand and was holding it away from Chase. The sofa and the chair in the room were turned upside down and the shelf stacked with figurines and plushes was face down on the floor, figures and plushes scattered all over the floor. No one spoke for a moment. “Jack…” Schneeple said, but trailed off. Jack didn’t speak. He honestly didn’t know what to say. Suddenly, he felt a deep anger start bubbling inside him. Go on…Anti said, Look what they’ve done to you. You let them into your house, your property, and this is how they repay you! Go on…make them pay… Jack shut his eyes. He hated feeling angry. It was the worst emotion of them all. He tried to avoid it at all costs, but Anti was doing a pretty good job at making him feel a deep seated rage that made him want to tear each and every one of the clones apart. He shut his eyes tighter as the logical part of his mind took over. They had never had an experience like this before. They had never had to worry about a bunch of breakable objects in the room they were able to play in in the lab. They’d never had the experience of being completely free, with no one to tell them what to do. Of course they were going to lose their minds! It was just natural!
“No…” Jack said quietly in response to Anti, feeling the anger wash away. “No…?” Chase replied, overhearing him. “What? Oh no, it doesn’t matter!” Jack said. “Jack, I’m sorry!” Schneeple said quickly, taking a step forward, “Everyone lost it! Zhey were fighting and screaming and I vas trying to stop them but-“ “It’s ok! It’s ok!” Jack interrupted, putting his hands on Schneeple’s shoulders, “It’s fine!” “Your’e…not angry with us?” Marvin said, still hovering in the air. “Of course not!” Jack said, walking into the center of the room, “I understand why you did this, I really do! Besides…” he walked over to the TV (which was lucky not broken) and turned it on, “I’m not like them.” Everyone flinched at the mention of the scientists. Jack pulled out his PS4 and turned it on, and the TV screen flashed to life, showing the PS4 menu. “What are you doing?” Marvin asked, floating down slightly but still remaining in the air. “Are you punishing us?!” Jackaboy said quickly, panic in his voice. “Of course I’m not!” Jack said with a chuckle, “Were you listening to anything I just said?!” As he spoke, he shifted through his PS4 games, looking for one specific one. Finally, at the bottom of the pile, he found it. “Take a seat!” he said as he put the game into the console. Schneeple and Chase threw themselves into the sofa and chair (after turning them the right way up) and Jackaboy and Marvin floated down and sat cross-legged on the floor in between them. Jack handed the controller to Schneeple as the game he’d just put in appeared on the PS4 menu.
Undertale.
“Under…tale…” Chase read slowly, rolling each word over in his mouth, “What kind of name is that?” “It’ll make sense when you start playing,” Jack said, taking a seat next to Schneeple. “I…don’t understand…” Jackaboy said, turning to face Jack, “What is this? What are you doing?” “This is a video game.” Jack replied with a smile, “ And I’m trying to keep you guys entertained in less…destructive ways.” “Vhat do I do vith zhis?” Schneeple asked, staring down at the controller blankly. “Press the X button,” Jack replied. Schneeale stared at the controller for a good minute longer, trying to work out which button Jack was talking about, before finding the button and pressing it. And he’s supposed to be the smart one…Anti snarled. Give him a chance, Jack thought back, He’s never had to do anything like this before. He can perform complicated heart surgery on a complete stranger with no medical training whatsoever, but he can’t work a PS4 controller? How does that make any sense?! Jack ignored this comment and focused on the screen as the menu music started to play. Jack couldn’t help but smile as he saw Marvin and Jackaboy start dancing to the music. Even Chase was bobbing his head to the beat. “Catchy.” Chase said, a smile forming on his face. “Oh, it gets a hell of a lot better than this!” Jack said, grinning wider. He held his hand out for the controller and Schneeple placed it in his hand. “Now, watch closely,” Jack said, getting the controller right in his hands and pressing X to start the game, “I’m going to teach you how to save lives.”
It occurs to me that as much as “humans are the scary ones” fits sometimes, if you look at it another way, humans might seem like the absurdly friendly or curious ones.
I mean, who looked at an elephant, gigantic creature thoroughly capable of killing someone if it has to, and thought “I’m gonna ride on that thing!”?
And put a human near any canine predator and there’s a strong chance of said human yelling “PUPPY!” and initiating playful interaction with it.
And what about the people who look at whales, bigger than basically everything else, and decide “I’m gonna swim with our splashy danger friends!”
Heck, for all we know, humans might run into the scariest, toughest aliens out there and say “Heck with it. I’m gonna hug ‘em.”
“Why?!”
“I dunno. I gotta hug ‘em.”
And it’s like the first friendly interaction the species has had in forever so suddenly humanity has a bunch of big scary friends.
“Commander, we must update the code of conduct to include the humans.”
“Why? Are they more aggressive than we anticipated?”
“It seems to be the opposite Commander. Just this morning a crewman nearly lost their hand when attempting to stroke an unidentified feline on an unknown world. Their reaction to the attack was to call the creature a “mean kitty” and vow to win it over. Upon inquiry it seems they bond so readily with creatures outside their species that they have the capacity to feel sympathy for an alien creature they have never seen before simply because it appears distressed. I hate to say this commander but we must install a rule to prevent them from endangering their own lives when interacting with the galaxy’s fauna.”
“I see what you mean. So be it, from now on no crewman is allowed to touch unknown animals without permission from a superior officer. And send a message to supplies about acquiring one of these “puppies” so that their desire to touch furred predators can be safely sated.
Ehehehe I love this! Every time someone adds a short story to my post it gets like 90% cuter and more epic
Lets be honest, the humans would ignore the hell outta that rule whenever alone.
“So I hear that you’ve just recruited a human for your ship.”
“Yes, it’s the first time that I’ve worked with these species,
but they come highly recommended. Say, you’ve worked with a few, what tips can
you give me? I’d hate to have some kind of cultural misunderstanding if it’s
avoidable.”
“The
first rule of working with humans is never leave them unsupervised.”
“Wait, what?”
“I’m serious. Don’t do it. Things. Happen.”
“But wait, I thought that I heard you highly recommended that
every crew should have at least one on board?”
“Absolutely, and I stand by that. Humans are excellent
innovators, and are psychologically very resilient. If you have a crisis, then
a human that has bonded wth your crew properly can be invaluable. Treat your
human well and you should get the best out of them as a crew member. Their
ability to get on with almost any species is legendary.”
“But Toks, didn’t you just say…”
“The
trouble is that they will potentially try to bond with anything. If you leave them
unsupervised, you have no idea what kind of trouble they can get themselves into. It was
sheer luck that the Fanzorians thought that it was funny that the human picked
up the Crown Prince to coo at him.”
“Crown Prince Horram, Scourge of Pixia?”
“The
very same. Surprisingly good sense of humour. But don’t even get me started on
that one time with the Dunlip. Al-Human wanted to know if they could keep it.
As a pet.”
“A Dunlip? You
mean the 3 metre tall apex predators from Jowun?”
“Yup. Don’t
leave your humans unsupervised.”
“I’ll uh, take that under advisement.”
“Seriously. Get a supply of safe animals for the humans to bond with or they will make their own. I mean, they will try to befriend anything they come across anyway, but without any permanent pets they can get… creative. Don’t even get me started on the time one of them taped a knife to one of our auto-cleaners and named it Stabby.
Three weeks in and when we finally caught the wretched thing, half the humans on crew tried to revolt about us “killing” Stabby by removing the knife.
“How… how did you resolve that sir?”
“Glaxcol made a toy knife out of insulation rubber and strapped that on instead. Quite a creative solution, I suppose.”
“And that sated the humans?
“Worse.”
“Worse?”
“They thought it was so funny they made a second one, strapped false eyes on springs to both and held mock battles. Then decided Stabby and Knifey were in love and now none of them will allow the others to stage fights between them any more.”
Stabby is an omniversal constant.
Oh my gods, we’re the Steve Irwins of the universe.
this is my fave thing.
it can’t even be safe to assume humans would only attach themselves to only fuzzy, furry things. reptilian and even insectoid creatures are just as likely to be randomly selected as “this is a thing i love” by a human.
“Excuse me, captain? Human-Rob requests that we … bring aboard … a Kilarn.”
“A Kilarn? The giant poisonous and highly aggressive insectoid predator? Am I hearing you correctly?”
“…. Yes ser.”
“For the love of- WHY?”
“I asked the same thing, to which they replied “he’s trying his best” in a distressed tone of voice.“
