#painful respawns
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Computer Virus
Cross-posted to AO3 here: Computer Virus
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The Decked Out 2 section of the museum was turning out nicely. Cub now had a large assortment of artifakes to fill the shelves he had running through the tower he had *ahem* acquired before Tango had ever opened the dungeon doors. And now that the hermits were completing run after run, there was a steady stream of artifakes coming out of the game. It was only a matter of time before Cub had them all. He could be patient. He could be vigilant.
Although, more shards would be nice.
He had just made up another handful of item frames. Each one was laid out on the counter in preparation for displaying another exhibit. Out came the shulker box. With one hand, he reached inside and pulled out a Hypnotic Bandana. “And here we are. The first artifake to be put on display.” He reached to place the bandana on an item frame, but the moment he let go, the entire world stuttered.
Cub froze. He blinked as solid surfaces vanished. He hung suspended in an open space. He couldn’t see anything, but he could see everything. There was no ground. No walls. No blocks in general. In the distance, he could see other mobs like him stuck in their own suspended existence. Horses and chickens were barely specks from this far away. A zombie shambled below him where a cave must have snaked underground.
The world was reloading the chunks around him.
The hermit braced himself as the world jolted once more. In the blink of an eye he was back in the museum garden. Everything was back to normal. “That was interesting.”
He shrugged it off. It wasn’t the weirdest thing. Multiplayer servers often experience hiccups. But when he turned back to the item frame, he let out a groan. “Oh nooo.”
The Hypnotic Bandana wasn’t there.
Had he dropped it? He didn’t see it on the floor. The item frame looked empty. Maybe his inventory? He rummaged through his pockets but didn’t find the scrap of cloth. How about the shulker box? The world could have lagged when it reloaded. So he pulled back out the shulker box and placed it on the floor. One quick look through the contents showed him that no, there was no bandana there either.
Cub was at a loss at this point. He even double-checked the item frame to make sure the bandanna hadn’t somehow gone invisible. It hadn’t. It was just gone. “Well that’s just unfortunate,” he huffed to himself. “Unfortunate circumstances indeed.”
Oh well. The bandanna wasn’t too difficult to get ahold of. He could always get another one. Tango might even be willing to give him a spare if he told the Dungeon Master that it had glitched out of existence.
Instead, he pulled out a Horn of the Goat. “I guess that makes this the second first exhibit in the Decked Out 2 tower. Come on baby, let’s go.” He placed the artifake carefully in the item frame and smiled when it stayed in place. Perfect.
But when he turned around for another, the world vanished once more.
“Woooaah woah woah!” With a sickening heave, Cub felt himself plummet. He couldn’t tell he was falling since there wasn’t a ground or set of surroundings to see and gauge his movement. But he could feel the rush of his body through the negative y coordinates. He might have even fallen past bedrock level. Had he clipped through the world?
As suddenly as it had vanished, his surroundings began to rematerialize in chunks. With a blip, deepslate appeared all around and inside of him. There was an instance of agony as the stone filled his lungs and suffocated him before his velocity caught up with him and every bone shattered.
Cubfan135 fell from a high place
Cub woke back up in his bed. “Oh man.” There went a perfectly good set of tools and armor. Thank goodness he had put down his shulker box before that happened. He wasn’t sure how he’d handle losing ALL of the artifakes instead of just one.
Immediately the communicator on Cub’s hand started going off. The little screen flashed with white words streaming across at rapid speed. There were other death messages alongside his.
XBCrafted fell off a ladder
GoodTimeWithScar fell from a high place
ImpulseSV fell from a high place
Grian fell from a high place
BdoubleO100 suffocated in a wall
The sight made him wince. That was a lot of death. The other hermits were frantically messaging each other about it. Understandably so. There were a lot of questions about lag.
Cub typed in a quick message to Xisuma. “Does the server need to restart, X?” The message hung undisturbed on the screen for all of ten seconds before the rest of the hermits washed it away in a tide of text.
Tango: Is X even online? I haven’t seen him in forever…
GeminiTay: It shows he’s on the server.
XBCrafted: Could you let us know when it’s fixed, suma?
More and more hermits were responding. Cub checked the listings, and sure enough Xisuma’s communicator signaled that he was there. But the admin wasn’t answering the stream of questions flying through the chat log.
Now that Cub thought about it, he hadn’t seen the man in a while either. He hadn't thought much about it. It was easy to assume X had been taking a break. They all got a little burnt out sometimes. Xisuma also had a tendency to throw himself into some pretty big projects, even by hermit standards. But here he was online.
Xisuma was probably caught up in another big project. It could even be one big enough to have caused that hiccup. X was no stranger to making farms that crashed the server, after all.
But Cub figured he should check on the admin. It wouldn’t hurt to visit an old friend. He wasn’t going to keep going with building when the world was so unstable anyway. So he went to his enderchest and pulled out a spare pair of elytra. The blue filigree wings were a little tattered from his Vex days, but they would do. He slipped on the pair and strapped himself in, only to launch himself off the nearest ledge.
The wind tousled his hair as the elytra caught the air. For a brief moment of self-indulgence, he let gravity do its job. It felt good to soar through the skies at a gentle glide that carried him down the river through spawn. The best place to look for X would probably be at his mountain. If he was working on some sort of project, it would be there. But Cub wouldn’t make it that far on a simple glide. He smiled as he pulled out a handful of rockets. There were more than enough to get him to the farm district and back. He held his breath for a heartbeat and lit a fuse. The rocket went off with a pop, hauling him forward in a rush of speed that made him laugh with excitement. Even when the motion sent his stomach somersaulting at the sudden change in direction.
He was halfway to his destination when a familiar stutter crossed the world. The ground didn’t disappear this time, though. It was more like a feeling deep in Cub’s bones. That internal sense of “wrongness” that came over him whenever the world glitched.
He looked about him as he flew, but didn’t know what could have brought on the feeling. Nothing appeared to be wrong. Chunks were still loading in as he flew. The ground was intact below him, the clouds were in the sky, and there were even a few mobs below.
With a shrug, he lit another rocket and let it carry him up along the sheer cliffs of X’s mountain. Cold breezes hit his cheeks as the snowy stone fell away under him-
He was back at the bottom of the mountain. He was back at the bottom of the mountain? Oh no he was back at the bottom of the mountain and it was coming up fast! In a panic, he shot off another rocket, which only launched him face-first into the cliffside with a sickening CRUNCH.
Cubfan135 experienced kinetic energy
Cub was back in his bed. “Darn it.” He sighed, realizing the lag had gotten him again. The communicator was going off with more messages from the other hermits, but he ignored it this time. There was only so much time before his stuff disappeared. So he grabbed himself ANOTHER set of wings and ANOTHER bundle of rockets and set off again.
One quick pit stop to pick up his lost goods later, and he was back on track to seeing X. This time, he would give all structures a wider birth. The skull in the side of the mountain was a different matter. Rather than risk another long trek, Cub placed a bed just inside the skull’s teeth at the entrance to Xisuma’s mega-base. At least that way he wouldn’t have to come from his own base if the world decided to struggle again.
“X,” he called, dropping down the chasm under the skull. “You in there X?” There was no reply, but that didn’t mean much. It was a pretty big base after all. There were a lot of places to go and hidden redstone rooms tucked out of sight. Cub started to wander through the halls, calling out to his friend.
He hadn’t gotten far when he heard a muffled, “Would that be Cubfan I hear,” coming from behind a wall.
Cub smirked. “It would. Does that mean that’s an Xisuma I hear?”
“It is indeed. Come in. Come in. I’m just fixing some redstone.”
Cub took that as permission to break a hole through the wall. The pickaxe came out in a heartbeat, which he promptly used to knock a space into the deepslate tall enough for him to fit through. “Don’t mind if I do.”
Unsurprisingly, the space behind was filled with your typical redstone layouts. Lines of redstone connected smooth stone torch towers. The floor was dotted with raised platforms housing repeaters and comparators.
Xisuma was leaning heavily against one of those platforms. Lines lit up as he moved the torch of a repeater to adjust the delay. At the sound of the wall breaking, he turned to greet Cub. “Hey, man? What brings you down here?”
The sound of Xisuma’s voice made Cub pause. It sounded nasally. Almost like he was having difficulty breathing. “The world’s been acting up,” he eventually says. “People were worried that the server might need a restart. You didn’t seem to be responding. I wanted to check-in. See if there was anything we could do to help?”
X dropped the torch he was fiddling with and crossed his arms. “Ah, my apologies. I must not have seen.” He pulled out his communicator to check on the messages.
As he moved, Cub noticed that X seemed a little sluggish. There was still the heaviness to his breathing, but just the act of pulling out the little electronic looked labored. “Oh my goodness. I didn’t think the technical issues would cause this sort of problem.”
“So you knew about it?”
“Well, yes, but-” X looked like he wanted to say more, but cut himself off with a bought of coughing. He hunched forward, grabbing the edge of a redstone tower for support. It sounded awful. Even Cub could hear the rattle in Xisuma’s chest as he practically coughed up a lung.
Before the coughing could settle, though, the world fazed out again. Blocks, walls, and floors vanished in an instant. Cub tried reaching out to grab onto some invisible object to keep from falling again, but luckily that didn’t happen this time around. The blocks were just invisible, not gone. Still, it was a relief when X managed to clear his lungs and reality flickered back into place around the two of them.
“You’re sick,” Cub said, deadpan.
“Ah. Yes, I suppose I am…”
He hadn’t even known admins could get sick. “Is that why the world is so messed up right now?”
“Well, there is a substantial link between an admin and their server…” His friend scratched sheepishly at the back of his neck. He was looking away, but now that Cub knew what to look for he could see the latent exhaustion in the little of X’s face that could be made out through his mask. The purple glass didn’t do much to hide the dark circles under the admin’s eyes.
“Alright. Then that settles that. We’re going to get you nice and healthy again. Let’s go.”
“What? But there’s still so much left to do! I still have to finish this game-”
Cub cut him off. “Evil X can take care of that if you need it done. You, sir, are going to get some bed rest.” X made an indignant snort but didn’t complain any further as Cub grabbed him by the wrist. He let himself be pulled from the back room out the makeshift doorway Cub had dug into the wall. “Now help me out here and point me in the direction of your bed,” Cub huffed, which got a chuckle out of the other man.
It took a bit of time, but X managed to talk him through finding his bed. “You, stay right there,” Cub said, pulling out a crafting bench and placing it on the floor nearby. “If you need anything, I’ll be right here for you. I can take care of you. The sooner you feel better, the better. Doctor Cub is on the case.”
Xisuma sniffed. “Now don’t you think you’re being a little over the top? It’s just a head cold. It will pass in no time.”
“‘Just a head cold’ got a bunch of people killed,” Cub pointed out, motioning toward X’s communicator.
“Point taken. But really, I don’t think there’s any need for you to blow it out of proportion. I betcha a nice warm meal and a good rest will be all it takes for me to feel right as rain.”
“Ah. Good idea. Let’s make you something to eat.” Nothing helped the metabolism like a nice warm bowl of soup. He even knew where to get some mushrooms. In no time at all he had a nice broth boiling over a crafting bench.
“That does smell delicious,” Xisuma admitted.
Cub turned from the crafting bench with the wooden bowl cupped in both palms. “Here we are. A delicious bowl of mushroom stew.” Steam curled from the freshly made meal. Hopefully, that would hit the spot.
“Thanks, Cub,” Xixuma said with a sniff. His eyes were soft and brimming with gratitude behind the mask as he reached for the bowl. “That looks delicious. I-” X cut himself off. Cub could see the man’s eyes narrow behind the purple glass. His whole body tensed up. Even his grip on the bowl. “I… I… I-” he threw his arms over his face. “ACHOOO!”
The force of the sneeze made the walls shake. The suddenness of it nearly made Cub jump out of his skin. “Geez, man. You scared me.” He rushed to the nearest chest in search of tissue paper. He flung open the cover of the chest, only to have it slam shut on him when he went to reach inside. “Huh.” That was a new one. So he tried to open again, but the lid clipped through his fingers and the chest was closed once more. It took two more tries before he finally managed to get inside. He grabbed the box from the bottom of the chest and tucked it under his arm before rushing back to X’s bed. “Here. Best if we kept these out for now… huh?”
Xisuma hadn’t moved since Cub had left him. And not in the sense that he hadn’t left the bed. Xisuma literally hadn’t moved a muscle. He was frozen in place, one arm still flung haphazardly in front of his face and shoulders hunched under the force of the sneeze. “X?” Xisuma still didn’t move. He didn’t even appear to be breathing.
Cub wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do in this situation. Tentatively, he approached his friend and reached out. When he touched X’s shoulder, everything in sight hitched.
With a dizzying lurch, Cub found himself back on the other side of his bed. The box of tissues was no longer tucked away under his arm. Crash! Something wet splattered across the front of his coat. Viscous brown liquid dripped down his chest and sleeves. It took him a second to realize it was mushroom stew.
The wooden bowl that X had been holding a second ago now rolled across the floor. Xisuma was once more reanimated, pulling his arm away after the sneeze as time began to flow once more. Cub’s communicator instantly buzzed as the rest of the hermits’ realities caught up with them.
GoodTimeWithScar fell from a high place
Keralis fell off scaffolding
Grian experienced kinetic energy
GeminiTay tried to swim in lava
Tango was poked to death by a sweet berry bush
Docm77 blew up
Stressmonster101 fell from a high place
The shear amount of death made Cub whistle. That was some awful lag. If the world did that every time the admin sneezed, they would be in for a long day.
“Uh, oh come on now,” X’s voice brought Cub’s attention back to the situation at hand. “Eugh. That's so gross.” X had his hands pressed against the side of the mask. His fingers reached around the edges, looking for the seams so he could take it off. The sneeze had left something awful splattered across the viewing window of Xixuma’s mask. It completely obscured the man’s eyes. The sight nearly made Cub gag.
“Just to be clear,” Cub said, making sure to look at anything other than Xisuma’s face. “When I said I would help you out, ‘mask cleaning’ was not included in the offer.”
#whumptober 2023#prompt no. 13#“I don't feel so good.”#hermitcraft#creative writing#illness#death with respawn mechanics#painful respawns#cubfan135#xisumavoid#xisuma#glitching
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Me: please don't tell me I have to tank this part
LoP tutorial: just tank this part
Me:
#i HATE those guys with long sticks ending up in a drill (?)#and those that throw the electric bombs#why are the respawn points so far away from each other. and the enemies respawn. pain#lies of p#lop#faceless
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rewatching the jedi: fallen order reveal trailer right now since finishing jedi survivor made me feel nostalgic
and um
kinda ironic looking back that cal said this considering what happened in the second game… 🥲
#i’m in so much pain#jedi fallen order#jedi survivor#cal kestis#cameron monaghan#respawn#ea#star wars
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i'm not into cannibalism by itself, but if for fantastical reasons if A) it wasn't painful and B) there was no long term consequences (like i had a healing factor) i wouldn't mind having like. a werewolf lovingly gnaw on my organs. i don't even mean it in like a brutal savage demeaning way but with like love and tenderness but he's chewing on my intestions.
LITERALLYYYYT exactly. if there were no conseuqences it would be so so so so hot. love bites or whatever <3<3<3<3
#thank you video games for having respawn so i can conviniently avoid consequences in every fantasy#i wouldnt mind if it was like. about as painful as any other kind of bite. ykwim
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Bro why am I only now finding out that the anime boy from Royale high was hokuto
#ensemble stars#enstars#hokuto hidaka#Royale High was my shit back in the day#it was so painful farming for diamonds though#i would sit at the computer and just wait all day for them to respawn
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Thinking about the whole if one soulmate dies the other dies of heartbreak thing- just people getting closer when they become yellow cause sure sharing pain is a pretty good indicator that you're y'know bound and all but nothing compared to feeling your heart shatter in your chest during the few moments where your soul is without it's other before you respawn together
#thinking about jimmy solidarity just casually climbing up a hill then just suddenly the worst pain of his life then respawning#trafficblr#double life#double life smp#team rancher my beloveds
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I am reading a kazumaji time travel fic. I am in awe
#rant#i got very lucky with a good fic as the first one i found#tjey are So in character and tje author mixes the serious angst weight of the#pain of the series. with the comedic ridiculousness like OLD MAN TIME MACHINE MAJIMA#which i also feel is like. a lowkey reference to yakuza being a game and kiryu dying but respawning#and its also Its own intriguing mystery plot cause we are trying to figure out who fucked up the timeline!#and its yakuza 0 majima/older series kiryu#which means like. i get one character im very familiar of#wheteas kiryu reads correct but hes a character im not super informed on yet#so the future parts are believable to me and then the memory parts are like. fill in the gaps#that the games never did. its all iust really good
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Unpopular opinion: All games should have the option to enable pausing.
And to save almost everywhere.
Yes even in soulslike games.
I am an adult who has a full time job and responsibilities. I get to play maybe an hour a week. I do not want to lose that hour of progress because devs decided 'pause' was not allowed in their game and I had sudden unexpected things come up that meant I had to quit the game without saving/leave it playing and hope enemies wouldn't respawn.
Also it would massively increase accessability. I have fully working non-injured hands and they still need a break after a tough boss fight. I can't imagine how frustrating it must be for people with joint pain, arthritis, etc, etc.
#gaming#accessability#a solid portion of games these days are 18+#so they should be designed remembering that most 18+ people do not have hours every week to do nothing but game#I am in a loquacious mood tonight
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some random mc screenshots to counteract the amount of angst i just wrote. mostly of me being stuck in weird places because of Claimed Chunks making it so im functionally in adventure mode at other people's bases
bonus screenshot of @aperture-science-sys drowning in the field. because death message testing. i think that was the reason?
#haunted ecosystem#i love that you can tell when ive been doing something depending on how full my inventory is. like.#im at home/at our base? my inventory is basically empty because its all put away or in backpacks#im out / was just adventuring? so much random crap. because my backpacks are full. i need to make more stack upgrades for my block bag lol#also my lavenders <3 its just a staple of my inventory#i always have lavenders with me since i both like how they look and also i keep needing to make waystones...#ive gotta run around and collect the ones ive accidentally abandoned. i'll have a *bunch* then#also i neeeeed to work on grinding for wither skeleton skulls#its just actually a pain in the ass and i need to just make a wither skeleton farm#i just. dont want to#however i also dont want to try and figure out if anybody has made one already and if theyre willing to let me use it#bc i think the only group with one is withers crypt and i am mildly terrified of them#im just a little guy who wants more hearts.... then im gonna start farming ghasts to respawn the dragon for *those* hearts#its a whole process. but also i should. probably finish enchanting my armor#ough. i still have to talk to people for that because i dont want to spend like four hours cycling villager trades because i dont want#to have to burn more armor because its ended up being cursed#i need to work on tinkers stuff just to recycle the cursed things. SIGH.#modded minecraft grind.#except my connection is so dogshit that the grind is actually just a Problem half the time
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I hope whoever made the decision that the warden could kill you through walls steps on a lego
#all my netherite#might have respawned#I’m going to cry#the shrieker is IN THE WALL#so I can’t get to it without the warden spawning#pain#send help
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this is a johnny waffles hate blog
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Surviving Dead
I don’t know if it is still a thing by the time you read this, but did you know that in Minecraft there was a bug where the Ender Dragon’s breath attack would still kill you even if you were holding a totem of undying? You would lose your items and then come back where you last set your spawn…
Cross-posted on AO3 here: Surviving Dead
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Cleo was born the day after she died.
Now, that probably doesn’t make much sense, does it? Unless you know Cleo pretty well. Then you would agree that the statement suits her.
She was a zombie, after all.
You might be able to tell if you spent enough time around her. Would notice the scar beneath her eye that never fully healed or faded. Or notice the way her hair and nails never grew any longer. The pale, bloodless skin that almost looked green in certain lighting was probably the biggest clue, though.
But it was more than that, though. Unlike the rest of the hermits who weren’t ‘undead,’ she left no trace.
Joe was the first one to notice it after she joined the server. She had misjudged the distance on her leap. The ground came rushing up to meet here.
“Whoah!”
She knew it wouldn’t hurt when the bones broke. That she of all people had the least to worry about if she died. Respawn was a nuisance that lost you time and left you scrambling to refind your items. But that didn’t stop the fear from seizing up her arms and legs. Her brain still went blank with panic, rendering the water bucket in her inventory useless. She always did have a fear of heights, and therefore afraid of the ground itself.
ZombieCleo fell from a high place
Cleo rolled out of bed with an annoyed sigh. At least she didn’t have to travel far without armor or tools.
Joe was waiting for her with a chest back by the cliffside. He sat on its lid, twiddling his thumbs, when she picked her way back down.
“I put your stuff in the chest,” he offered, slipping off the lid. ”I wasn’t sure where you would have set your spawn…”
“Oh, my bed’s not far.” She flipped open the lid. Sure enough, he had laid out the armor, pick, and sword carefully along the base of the chest so they wouldn’t scratch against each other. There were also a few stray ink sacks and a flower piled in the corner. When had she picked up those?
“You know, Cleo, I… uh… I saw you fall back there.”
If it had been anyone other than Joe, she would have rolled her eyes. “Yes, I realize. No need to go rubbing it in my face now. I never claimed to be good at survival.”
“No! No no no,” Joe threw his hands out, shaking his head. “That’s not what I meant!”
“Then what did you mean?”
The chest lid creaked closed once more. Now Cleo was the one to sit down on top of it so she could lace up her armor. The buckles on the chestplate were difficult to undo with undead fingers still half numb from respawning.
Another set of hands reached into view. Joe picked up the next strap down. He slid the leather through the metal clasp for her with ease. “I don’t know… I just… I’ve never seen you drop dead right in front of me before. Or if I did I never really noticed. It looked like you didn’t leave a body behind. You vanished the instant you hit the dirt.”
“Ah.”
When your average person died, their body lingered for a moment. There would be a flash of pain as the damage to their flesh and bones set in before their consciousness moved on. The husk they had left behind would linger for a moment, nothing more than an empty shell without a soul and nowhere to go. And after that short moment passed and reality caught up with the newly respawned hermit, the body would fade away only to eventually appear sometime later as nothing more than a hollow shell destined to wander the land looking for the piece of itself that had moved on without it. Forevermore looking for something to fill the gaping hole left inside.
A zombie, if you will.
Cleo didn’t have that issue. She had never come across previous iterations of herself. There were no other Cleo’s wandering around the caves like there were Joes, or Jevins, or Bdubs, or any other hermit, really. Nor would that ever happen.
She stopped bothering with the chest plate and moved on to the boots. She let Joe take it over instead. Regular laces were easier to tackle when you didn’t have circulation in your hands.
Joe took the chest plate without question. He sat down on the chest next to her, sliding the large piece of armor into his lap as he moved. Brown eyes flicked back and forth behind green glasses from the chest plate to Cleo’s face and back again.
“It’s fine. It’s FINE. It’s just a thing I do,” she muses. “One of those things that comes with not actually being alive. Don’t go worrying about it.”
“Are you sure it’s alright?”
“Of course. It’s normal for me.”
“Does it hurt?”
“B-what?!” Cleo dropped her half-tied laces. It took a moment for her to register what he was asking before she broke down laughing. Some of the tension left Joe’s shoulders as he realized she wasn’t upset. He even chuckled along nervously.
“No,” she said once she recomposed herself. “If anything, it hurts less when I respawn than it would when you do.” Part of it was because she didn’t have a body that would linger. Part of it was because her dead nerve endings couldn’t send out those sorts of signals at the rate a normal human body could. They were stunted and slow in comparison.
She finished up with the laces and pulled out the leggings. There were more straps on these, but she only had to loosen a few to slip back inside.
“I’m sorry,” Joe said with a nervous smile. “I guess I never really thought about how things might be different for you, with you being a zombie and all. “You’ve just been Cleo for as long as I’ve known you, and then something like that happens in front of my face and I can’t help but think, ‘Oh! That’s different.’”
“In all fairness, you met me after all this happened.” She motioned to herself.
“If I might ask, how did it happen?”
The strap fell from between her fingers.
“Only if it’s alright with you, though,” Joe added. He had finished up with the chest plate by now. It rested in his lap, waiting for whenever she was ready to throw it on. He leaned over. One shoulder gently bumped against her side. “You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to. But if you do want to…”
She pursed her lips. "I don't think it's a matter of me not wanting to. It's more like I don't think I can."
Joe's nervous eyes narrowed. She could practically see the gears in his brain go into motion as he tried to parse out what she meant. "I didn't mean to bring up bad memories."
"That’s not it. It’s more like there isn't much for me to remember. I can't recall."
Her life before her undeath was an empty gap in her mind. Sometimes there were vague notions and feelings that crept up behind her when she least expected it. For instance, she had a feeling she had been a teacher in her previous life. It was her best guess considering the odd sense of deja vu that set in whenever she lectured one of the other hermits. It felt right.
Cleo was also fairly certain that who she had been before her untimely undeath had been a lot like who she was now. She wasn’t your typical wandering zombie. She didn’t hunger to fill some empty feeling deep inside. She still had a soul. A personality. A need to explore interests and desires. There was talent in her hands that let her build palaces and raise crops. That had to have come from somewhere.
“Do you at least know how it happened?”
Sort of. But that wasn’t a very good answer.
“The first thing I can remember was being afraid. More afraid than I have ever been since,” she started. One leg of armor was fully strapped on. Her leg was firmly strapped into the greave of the other, covering everything from the knee down. The cuisse that was supposed to be covering her thigh was still hanging from the knee. Her hands moved automatically to finish tightening the leather fastenings into place.
“It was like I just woke up that way. One moment everything’s dark, and then the next, my eyes fly open and all I can think about is ‘I can’t breathe.’ I couldn’t see. I couldn’t move either, even though it felt like I was shaking like a leaf.��
It hurt like crazy, too. Not that I was physically hurt as far as I could tell later. But I suppose it’s a bit like how you describe dying from fall damage. You guys all say that you come back feeling like every bone in your body should be broken.”
But for me, it felt different. My skin burned like I had just been dipped in acid. When I closed my eyes, I saw an endless black sky and glowing purple eyes staring back at me. There was a little bit of that fear of falling, too. Like I thought I should have been falling through an abyss instead of lying down-“
“So that’s why you don’t like the End,” Joe cuts her off, eyes widening in realization. He pats a closed fist within the palm of his other hand like he’s just cracked a particularly difficult code.
“I don’t mind the End,” she snaps, playfully jabbing him in the side with an elbow. “I just have no illusions about it. I am fully aware that it is a terrible, dangerous place. And I have a healthy sense of self-preservation, unlike the rest of you.”
By now her legs are fully strapped into the armor. Joe offers the chest plate. He holds it up for her so she can slip inside. Then he reaches for the buckles at her side while she holds it in place. “We’re all professionals here. I’ll have you know that last time we beat the dragon I only cried once and died thrice.”
This time, Cleo really did roll her eyes. “Somehow, that’s still better than what I managed on that trip. Now where was I? Oh! So yeah, it didn’t feel like my bones were broken. I don’t think I died of fall damage, at least.”
“But the really weird part was that I woke up underground. In a box. Someone had gone and buried me. They must have thought I had been dead dead. No respawn. No fading body. Just me. And I suppose I was dead. It’s not like I have a heartbeat for them to feel anymore.
“It was pitch black down there. It took some fumbling around, but I managed to feel some other things in the box with me. There were jagged bits of ceramic. Couldn’t tell what those were. Some dead flowers were up by my head. They were nothing but dried-out leaves and petals at that point. And then there was a diamond pick. Whoever had buried me had been nice enough to put the pick in the box with me before closing the casket.
“It wasn’t enchanted, but it was better than nothing. There wasn’t much room to move around in the box. I couldn’t sit up straight or bend far enough to reach my toes, so I used the spike on one end to start scratching at the lid over my chest. It was the best I could do since I couldn’t swing it.
“The scraping noise it made was awful, but eventually I managed to break through. Soil came raining down as soon as I did. The hole I made widened as the dirt pressing down on it shifted. It all came down on top of me.
“It was heavy and it was everywhere; pressing down on my lungs, pinning my arm down… It got threateningly close to where I might just accidentally breathe it in…
“It felt like I would suffocate down there. In retrospect, it’s a good thing I don’t actually need to breathe. If I had, I probably would have been stuck in a death loop, assuming that my spawn was there at the time. It would have had to have been since that casket was the last place I had slept. And I was definitely having a panic attack so you can be sure there was no oxygen left in that box.
“And then I had to make the whole situation worse by pulling more dirt in. There was too much on top of the box. If I pushed out, it wouldn’t go anywhere. So it had to go somewhere. I had to use that pick to shove as much dirt as I could off to the bottom of the casket where my feet were.
“That seemed to do the trick, though. Once some of that soil wasn’t piled on top of the lid anymore, the ground had a bit more give to it. I could drag myself out through the mud, hand over hand…
She was vaguely aware that Joe had stopped messing with the straps hanging from her chest plate. Instead, he wrapped one arm around her shoulders and pulled her against his chest. The armor clattered at the sudden movement. “Joe-?”
His eyes were watery behind the lenses of his glasses. His other arm pulled her in for a tighter squeeze. “You must have been so scared.”
Yeah. That’s pretty much how she started explaining all this. Still, it was Joe. “Yeah.” She awkwardly brought her own arm up so she could pat his back reassuringly. “But it’s alright now.”
He returned her pat with a well-meaning one of his own against her shoulder, only to wince as the edge of her armor dug into his ribs. She pulled away and he didn’t protest. “But I still don’t get it. How did that death end up so different?”
“I’m not entirely sure after that. I just kinda rolled with what happened around me after that. It didn’t take me too long to figure out I had a few quirks. But there was one thing about that dumb box that gave me an idea or two about what happened.”
One of Joe’s eyebrows went up.
“I, uh… I went back to the gravesite later. It was so surreal, but I ended up digging it back up to check the casket for clues. It took me a while to clear out all the dirt that had spilled in from the top, but remember when I mentioned those little ceramic things I didn’t recognize?”
Joe nodded.
‘Well, when I looked at them in the daylight, they looked like broken pieces of a totem of undying.”
She paused, giving Joe plenty of time to mull over what she had just said. She watched his face flicker from one expression to another: from contemplation to confusion, to disbelief, to bewilderment. “Are you saying that you must have used a totem and it didn’t work?”
“I’m saying I don’t know for sure,” she stated plainly. “But I suspect that a totem went off and it only partially worked.”
It made sense to her. Totems bound the soul to the body in times of extreme duress. The latent power inside was so strong that it could heal in an instant and protect the flesh from future damage, if only for a little while. So let’s say the totem wasn’t fully charged, or didn’t break fast enough, or whatever other possible mishap happened that she could reasonably think of. Was it really that unreasonable to think that the totem only half worked? It could have succeeded in anchoring her soul to this body but hadn’t been enough to actually save her.
The last few buckles on her chest plate slid into place. She was once more fully protected from the dangers of this world. Or as protected as she could manage. Both she and Joe stood up. He gave her a few steps worth of space so she could pick up the chest.
“That’s actually terrifying to think about,” he said, burying his hands in his pockets. “I wonder if you got bugged out. Have you talked to Xisuma? Or any other admin on any other server?”
Cleo nodded. “I have. X took a look and it doesn’t show that there’s anything wrong with me. If it was a bug, it would be server-related. I am what I am no matter where I go, remember?”
“I know. I know. It’s just.. How does that even happen?”
She shrugged and smiled. “Your guess is as good as mine.” That’s all it really was, anyway. A guess. “Now come on. We’ve wasted enough time here. I need to get down in the mines if I’m going to have any diamonds this season.”
#whumptober 2023#prompt no. 25#“Buried alive”#hermitcraft#creative writing#zombiecleo#joe hills#zombiecleo-centric#painful respawns#broken respawn#zombie zombiecleo
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The internet vegetarians have reached a new low. I just got recommended a video about a girl who refused to kill cows in minecraft because she's vegetarian
#THSTS NOT A REAL ANIMAL#AND IT FUCKING RESPAWNS ANYWAY IN THE WILD#IT CANNOT FEEL PAIN BECSUSE IT ISNT A REAL THING#LIKE YOU DO YOU BUT WHY ARE YOU ARGUING WITH PEOPLE ABOUT HOW VIRTUAL VEGETARIANISM IS BETTER THAN KILLING SHEEP IN MC#NONE OF IT IS REAL#freak ass
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since beating jedi survivor, i haven’t stopped thinking about kata: her relationship to the mantis crew, the effect that the ending will have on her, and the role she might play in the third game…
(jedi survivor spoilers ahead)
i don’t think there’s any doubt that she’s going to have a big role. but at the same time, i also don’t know what exactly it’s going to be yet. my initial thought was that in the next installment, cal takes her on as an apprentice and decides to train her in the ways of the force. i mean, kata is likely force sensitive—it makes sense, right? and we’ve seen how well games that have an older mentor/younger child dynamic (i.e. god of war, the last of us) do.
but the more i thought about it, the more that i start to suspect that isn’t going to be the case.
something i’m realizing the more i reflect on his character is that cal is probably hesitant to take kata on for multiple reasons. at the end of the game, bode gives his life doing what he’s convinced will be best for kata. though we as an audience obviously know that this isn’t likely what’s actually best, it doesn’t change the fact that he’s convinced of this and dies for it. before cal kills him, he even asks: “when the empire comes, will you be able to protect my little girl?” bode betraying cal doesn’t mean that cal didn’t see him as the brother he never had. he only kills bode when he refuses to stand down, and to an extent he probably understands that bode is driven by the desire to protect the people he loves. i think that now that bode is gone, cal is going to feel the need to be kata's protector. and we all saw the vision he had in fallen order of what would happen to the force sensitive children he took under his wing—dead at the hands of the empire, and he was unable to protect them. it's a risk that he probably won't want to take with kata, just like he didn't want to take it with all of those children.
another factor that i think will make cal hesitant to teach her is that he's fighting his own internal battle. he first taps into the dark side on nova garon, and though merrin is able to break through to him then, he doesn't stop using it throughout the rest of the game. he almost loses himself completely to the darkness, which he even admits in the final scene. and merrin tells him that he'll never be alone, that he has his chosen family to guide him back to the light. but even then, there's a reason that jedi ban attachments. who's to say that he won't eventually turn to the darkness because he wants to protect his family? it's what ended up happening to bode, and obviously what happened to anakin (though cal doesn't know this). throughout cal's journey, we see him fight several fallen jedi—trilla suduri, taron malicos, masana tide, bode akuna, and dagan gera. he knows how easily a jedi can turn, how easily they can use their gifts and abilities for the worse. and the thought that it could happen to him, that it did almost happen to him, frightens him. his struggle with the dark side isn't going to end with this game, and he'll probably battle with it for a while. in what world would he ever be fit to be a mentor when he's still struggling not to lose himself? cere tells cal at the end of the game to guide kata through the darkness—but how could he possibly do this when he isn't even able to guide himself?
kata is still a young child, not even ten years old yet. her father is gone, and the memories that he'll leave behind for her are likely complicated. i mean, in his own rage and in his effort to protect her in the final fight against cal, he ends up hurting her. she's grown up with her father constantly being on missions and leaving her by herself, distancing her from him in the process. at the same time, she also acknowledges that the death of her mother changed him for the worse. and she doesn't know the full extent of bode's horrible actions. she begs him to back down in the final fight not because she sees him as evil, but because she knows that if he doesn't, she's going to lose her father too. this leaves me to wonder—how is she going to remember him? and how will it affect her relationship with cal? kids who lose their parents often want to remember them in a good light. not always, but it isn't a rare occurrence. and i wouldn't doubt it if that's what kata chooses to do going forward. though she befriends the mantis crew afterwards and doesn't explicitly hold a grudge against them for killing her father, i think that the underlying pain and grief of losing a parent is still there. cal and merrin kill her father right in front of her. that isn't something that anyone could ever expect to fully recover from. and that isn't something that just goes away, especially with kata being so young and having to process it as she grows up.
i'm not saying that kata is going to be the main villain of the next game, or that she's going to grow up to despise the mantis crew. but i think it's very likely that her relationship with them is going to be somewhat strained as she tries to make sense of who her father was and the decisions he made for her. maybe she's angry with cal for never telling her the full extent of what her father did, or maybe she's angry with herself for being the catalyst of his betrayal. either way, i do not see her just simply being okay and completely moving on from everything that's happened to her the same way that i do not see cal just simply being okay and moving on from his battle against the darkness. they're both going to struggle in the next game, and i think it's going to affect their relationship to each other drastically.
#i am not ready for the third game at all#i will be in so much pain the entire time#cal kestis#bode akuna#jedi survivor spoilers#jedi survivor#merrin#nightsister merrin#bd 1#greez dritus#jedi fallen order#star wars#ea star wars#respawn#kata akuna
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bro make a fanfic about the reader and the ghost/konig WHEN THE READER WAS SHOT IN THE BUN ON THE MISSION AHAHAHHHAH LMAO (in the military helicopter when they were supposed to return, the reader was holding her butt, moaning, writhing in pain and trying to hide the pain)
That is a funny thought…
Shots
Cw: gun violence, bb shots, tell me if I missed any.
You yelped when you were hit is the ass, flinching forward and raising your arm just as you turned to glare at whoever landed the shot. Your right cheek exploded in soreness, tingling from the sharp pain of a BB shot.
“Hit!” You called it, letting your rifle hang from your shoulder as you rubbed your right cheek, grumbling about the bastard, “On my fucking ass of all places.”
You walk towards the respawn with your arm up, still cussing out whoever shot you in the ass. You had a hunch about the shooter: Soap, who else had enough courage to shoot you in the ass. You doubted Gaz did it, he might’ve been tempted, but he preferred other type of pranks, more mischievous ones like tampering with the washer or drinks, harmless but hilarious. Soap, however, rarely knew the limit, going as far as stealing and hiding your stuff, tapping you in the ass or messing up your head while he cackled away, speeding off to Ghost or Price to escape your wrath.
You reasoned that this was a staged scenario, a small group activity Laswell came up with that landed your Task Force somewhere in France for game of airsoft, a Free for all in the reserved location. No one had complained, thinking it a good activity mixing fun, training and awareness —everyone agreed to it enthusiastically once Ghost had voiced his grumpy acceptance, seeing this as a moment to be able to training without the prying eyes of others or the presence of strangers. Once you reached the spawn point, your jump back in to land a few shots at Soap to see whether or not he liked getting his ass bruised by a BB. You walked off determined, mind narrowed down to a single goal, your retaliation—
Until you yipped a second time, a pellet bouncing off your second cheek. You whipped around, yelling as your eyes scoured the tree line and the openings in the buildings behind you, the windows, the roof and behind pillars. You couldn’t find Soap anywhere, he wasn’t hiding behind the trees or in the buildings, but you did catch the glint of a scope —a familiar sniper scope.
“Ghost, you son of a bitch!” You screamed in outrage, feeling how both cheeks throbbed with pain. You bared your teeth, hissing at your Lieutenant who seemed smug and comfortable in his high perch on the roof of the building, “Why’d you do that?! I was already out!”
”Big target, luv,” his amused voice cracked in your comm, the low rumble of sadistic pleasure ringing out in your headgear. He cocked his scope, his white mask standing starkly in his dark gear and broad figure, “Impossible to miss. Quit moaning.”
“Big target? Are you-!” Huffing at his continued laughter, you glared his way before you turned to hurry back to the respawn, “Let’s see who’s laughing later, you ass.”
“Fuck- Hit!”
Your shoulders shook with restrained laughter, admiring the way Ghost jumped from your perch, hidden in the darkness given by the cement wall. You listened to him hiss and swear, massaging the place you aimed for: the pronounced curve of his ass, his jeans rarely doing him the pleasure of hiding what he had.
“Quit moaning, Ghost,” you cackled as you parroted his words, telling him the same thing as he told you, but you had more to add, more to taunt and tease him as revenge, “Couldn’t miss it, Lt, it was a big fucking target.”
You watched him stomp off, retreating to the tree line for his spawn point. It filled with a sense of elation and ugly smugness, and all that was left now, was to find Soap.
“Steamin’ Jesus!” Johnny’s yelp felt more exciting than Ghost, something you could devour over and ove without regret.
“Not so fun, is it, Johnny?” You smirked, replying with a gleeful tone.
He looked red-faced, the tip of his ears turning a bright shade of red from the way you spoke to him, utilising his known weakness and playing him to watch him stutter and flush brightly.
“Awa’ a bile yer heid! That hurt, lass!” His voice had taken a whinier tone, face screwed in embarrassment and something that you couldn’t put your finger on at this distance.
“I know, shouldn’t have shot me in the ass then.”
Gaz tapped you on the shoulder, a smile threatening to break into chuckles. He’d known what happened to you and knew what you did in retaliation, finding amusement after siding with you, sitting beside you and peering at two frowning and mumbling men.
“Heard you had a lot of fun.”
“Not enough.”
You thought you heard Price sigh tiredly.
taglist: @sae1kie @yeoldedumbslut @bvxygriimes @distracteddragoness @konigsblog @im-making-an-effort @daisychainsinknots @0alk0msan @danielle143 @dont-mind-me-just-existing-sadly @tuttifuckinfruttifriday @notspiders @brokenpieces-72 @petwifed @aldis-nuts @randominstake @cassiecasluciluce @hayleybarnesx
#x reader#cod mw2#cod mw2 x reader#simon ghost riley#simon ghost riley x reader#ghost mw2#simon riley x reader#soap mw2#john soap mactavish#soap x reader#gaz mw2#kyle gaz garrick#gaz x reader#task force 141 x reader#task force 141#poly 141#captain john price#captain price#price mw2#captain price x reader
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