Words
November 21, 2012 at 2 AM, San Francisco, California: Choco
A hurricane of sandy brown leaves swirls around them as they fly through the deathly still woodlands, their frantic hearts beating as one as the silent menace approaches steadily, inexorably on their pulsing heat signals. His feet stumble slowly over the smooth, unstable stones spanning the center of the rushing stream, his weary eyes too focused on the deadly water swirling around him to notice the man watching him with concern from the far side of the riverbank. He would be furious if he knew the other had stopped to wait for him. His face would contort in disgust and shame, knowing that his childish trepidation of the water was the reason the human had stopped, wasting his precious life seconds to ensure the hybrid's safety. With a fearful glance behind his friend, the taller of the two reaches across the gap and pulls the lava mob across, muttering a soft apology when he sees the glowing creature wince as the cold spray comes in contact with his bare hand, a tiny stream of steam rising from the point of contact.
"Just shut up and go!" the lava mob whispers angrily as he shoves his friend forward into the dark forest. He pulls the brown, musty blanket they had swiped from the desert village over his trembling head to hide the effervescent glow of his bright fiery skin from the omnipresent drones soaring stealthily overhead. One glimpse of them between the dense, dark, dying leaves and both of them would be dead, too – or worse, they would do their horrific experiments on Rob this time. They would play God with his humanity, they would turn him into a monster. What they had done to Preston was irreversible. He couldn't let them do that to his only true friend, the only one who stuck beside him when everything else fell apart and the world turned against him, the only one who kept him human. If only one of them could escape, he would make sure it was Rob.
Rob trips and stumbles into a hidden cave, grunting pathetically as he slips down into the endless, unforgiving darkness. Preston follows faithfully, turning to shove a stray boulder into the small gap to prevent the dreaded drones from pursuing. He turns to follow the human deeper into the damp cave, ducking with a faint whimper as a family of angry vampire bats fly past his head and back towards the now blocked exit. They would never dare try to bite a creature made of lava, but they still inhabited the darkest corners of his mind and plagued his empty dreams. One mining adventure gone terribly wrong had brought him into this mess in the first place. He opens up the front of his scratchy makeshift shawl to light up the bowels of the cave, his body a walking, breathing torch. He watches the dim blue light from Rob's flashlight warily as he checks around the gargantuan room for signs of life, food, or shelter. He walks towards a second exit from the main chamber and moves to peek over the edge of the sharp cliff face when he hears the sound he fears the most.
"Preston!" The lava mob's heart sinks and turns into obsidian, weighing him down and freezing him in his tracks as the startled shriek echoes off of the stone walls and assaults his ears. He follows the sound of the voice to the room Rob had entered, gasping when he sees his friend's golden dagger shattered on the floor at his feet next to a bundle of severed optical cords and decimated computer chips. There was nothing left for him to do; the damage had already been done. "Preston... Are you okay?"
How could he ask that? How could this foolish human be concerned with the hybrid's safety when he himself was dying, a black steel lance wedged between his ribs, the weapon still loosely attached to the destroyed drone on the blood-splattered floor of the cave. Why had they separated? Why did he always have to be the one who hurt everyone around him? This was all his fault. He was the one who deserved to die but, once again, he will be the only one who lives.
"We're both fine, we're both gonna make it out of this." Rob smiles weakly and gestures at the sharp blade protruding from the sickening indentation in his chest, his filthy blue hoodie turning midnight purple from the spreading wave of blood and his breathing becomes more and more labored..
"You were never a good liar, Preston," he says gently while he hands their backpack of supplies to the lava mob, his eyes squinting in pain from the movement. "Take this and go. It sent the location to the mainframe before I could gut it. You have to run."
"No! I'm not leaving you here!"
"You have to! It's the only way! You can make it to the border, Preston. You can make it back home to your family, but you have to go now. We both knew I never had a chance, anyway." He looks into the human's still-bright, green-flecked hazel eyes and nods, swinging the heavy backpack onto his shoulders and leaning down to pick up the startled, wounded human, carefully disentangling the snakelike cords running through the cold metal arm of the drone to the spike keeping his friend's wound closed. "What are you doing? You are wasting time! You have to go!" He walks them back to the room he had been searching when he heard Rob scream, the human still oblivious to his plan.
"Neither of us ever had a chance, not against them."
"Preston, no!"
"I love you, Rob." With that final whisper, the lava mob yanks the pitch black steel bar out of his friend's chest, watching in sympathy as his eyes widen and his breath catches in his throat.
"I-I love... you, too," Rob laughs quietly through the growing pool of blood in his mouth, their words echoing softly in the steep ravine and wrapping comfortably around them as they hurtle to the bottom of the immense cavern and into the lake of freezing water below. Now the scientists couldn't hurt either one of them.
'I love you.'
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It wasn't perfect, but it wasn't too bad, either. It was up there with that Hunger Games series I wrote over the summer before I met Preston, and I think the people who read that story would appreciate this... thing. For just a five chapter short story, this monster took way too long to write and it isn't even that good. I guess I should be glad I don't write for a living, quality-wise. All I have to do is churn out something that someone somewhere might have some motivation to read and share around. The good thing is that the bar isn't set too high. I ain't no Hemingway. I edit through the chapter a couple more times before I save it and attach it to an e-mail, sending the story in its entirety to The Boss. I sit back and settle in with a fresh, cool can of black cherry Fresca with some quiet, smooth jazz playing through my headphones to block out that dang chihuahua barking next door. I check up on the magical world of Twitter while I wait for a response, knowing that he's been sitting around, editing his latest videos with Mitch while he waits for my morning report to fill him in on all the beastly news. I should make Zazu's song from "The Lion King" my theme for this informant job. I think Jerome would like that – me just breaking into song every time he calls me. Disney is love. Disney is life.
I'm only halfway through my YouTube comment check when His Highness replies with his usual Lenny face and a 12/10 rating. I know I should be happy he didn't zap me off the face of the Earth when he hacked into my computer and saw my files and browsing history, or worse, tell Preston about it. I would've been so dead. But this whole project just makes my moral compass go completely haywire. I think I'm stuck in the Bermuda Triangle and I can't get out. I log into my tier one WattPad account and write a quick story description and I post the first chapter before I head over to FanFiction.Net and Tumblr and do the same thing under the same username. A small flurry of reblogs, favorites, and votes follows and I lean back in my chair, torn between satisfaction and guilt.
I am Poofmore, one of the most renowned Poofless 'fangirls' on the entire internet, and one of the original and most dedicated supporters of the OTP of the decade. It had started as an innocent hobby, a way to joke around with some of Preston's fans and poke fun at the fandom and his videos where he'd never see it. Now... Now it's turning into more than just a hobby. This is part of my job, a job that I desperately need and can't afford to lose. I'm a professional Minecraft YouTuber shipper and I'm stuck in a moral grey area that haunts my dreams and hurts my heart just enough that it bothers me, but not enough to make me stop. This is all for the greater good, right? Like Billy Joel famously said: we didn't start the fire, we just fed it. And it'll burn on and on and on and on even after I'm gone. At least, I hope it will.
Anyone with eyes, ears, nostrils, fingers, or anything else can see that Rob and Preston have it bad for each other, but they're too fleeping stubborn to do anything about it except sit there and make cutesy faces and sex jokes at each other from two thousand miles away. Jerome has made it his pet project to get them together by any means necessary, and he hired me to help him do it. My strategy is to fire up the fandom so they'll mega spam their social media with Poofless everything until they see how much nicer and easier it would be if they'd just give in and kiss each other already. I'm four, five seconds from tattooing that "just kiss" meme from Reddit right on their hands so they'll have to look at it all day and night. I could also buy them both dinner and sing that one kissing song from "The Little Mermaid"... but I would like to keep my throat intact. For now, everything rests on my stories and my tweets and the ripples they make in the fandom. Maybe if we're lucky, they might learn a few tips and tricks of the trade when they read some of the less innocent fics.
It sounds like a brilliant master plan, right? Unfortunately, it doesn't look like it's working. Yet. Key word here is yet. It just makes Rob even more sad than he already is, and it royally pisses Preston off to a different space-time continuum. I have a lot of work ahead of me before I can call it quits. What Preston doesn't realize is that three of the biggest Poofless fan fic writers, one of the biggest Poofless photo editors, and two of the biggest Poofless Twitter stalkers are all actually just one person – and one of his best friends, at that. Yeah, I feel like a liar, a scammer, and a cheat for doing this to him, but it's all for his own good. I think. And to be fair, I was doing this stuff before I actually met him, and I have a public account that I post non-YouTuber stories on to cover my tracks. I didn't just jump on the money truck to save my own butt. I hope someday we'll get to a point where he'll thank me for my services, if he ever finds out. I know Rob will appreciate it; yet again he isn't the one in denial, either. As long as Poofless stays on speaking terms and neither of them finds out who I really am, life is great. I log out of all of my accounts and log in to my official Poofmore Twitter account to comment on Preston's last tweet and I post a link to my newest fan fic, "Experiment 72." My phone starts chirping merrily as the retweets and favorites begin.
Maybe there's a reason that theTwitter logo is a bird. Was this meant to be?
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This chapter takes place chronologically between chapters 26 and 27 of "Video Love." You didn't have to read this to follow the other story, but I hope you found it entertaining. What has been seen cannot be unseen.
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