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Aaaaaaand there went the last person
Luke chuckled softly as he watched his players spawn back on the platform, all groaning as they complained about the fire that spread too quickly around the small island. Luke couldn’t help but grin, wondering what everyone was expecting when they asked him to pull some bullshit
Luke was currently in his game Natural Disaster Survival, floating above on a cloud as he watched everyone play. Typically, he left his disasters to Cataclysm since Luke was usually busy with Admin work, but he had finished all his work early, and he had managed to escape before Builderman found out that piece of information, so he decided to indulge himself a little and do what he does best, make disasters
He shuddered a little, knowing if he had to spend five more minutes doing paperwork in that cramped building he was going to go mad
So he was the one controlling the disasters at the moment, puppeteering them for the amusement of his players, who were taking advantage of Luke’s sudden free time to ask for some challenge runs. That was fine, he didn’t mind messing around a little, especially when he could watch them frantically crawl up a tower due a tsunami
Luke snickered and started a new round, refusing to listen to the cries of his people to make it easier. They wanted a challenge run, didn’t they?
It was during that round that he heard it
“Yo!”
Luke blinked, turning around to stare at the two players that were standing on the waiting platform, both waving at him. They looked familiar somehow, but then again most people did when you were an Admin—the amount of faces Luke saw could fill dreams for years. He latched onto his green balloon and hopped off of the cloud, floating towards the two with a growing curiosity
“Yes? Is something wrong?” Luke asked, concern etched in his tone as he landed in front of them. Usually the people who played his games only called for him specifically if something went wrong, they wanted to do challenge games, or if they needed an instant Admin response. Luke never really liked doing admin work while he was in his game, but he supposed that was the consequence of being one of the more approachable Admins
Since—now that Luke was thinking about it—while a couple of the Admins made games, Luke and Telamon were the only ones who would spend excessive amounts of time in their own games. And Luke would bet way too much Robux that people would rather talk to him than Telamon
“No no! We just wanted to meet you!” One of them said. His skin was bright blue—maybe cyan actually, Luke couldn’t tell—, wearing oddly average clothing that was mostly all in black. He was wearing a black jacket with a plain white shirt underneath, he was also wearing black cargo pants with white suspenders dropped off the sides, with a set of black headphones set on his head. He looked…incredibly normal compared to Luke, though he supposed that made sense, since most people looked normal compared to him
The other person beside him looked less normal. His body seemed to be made out of stars—similar to Doombringer, Luke noted— with a more punk aesthetic going on, a spiked leather jacket with leather gloves and ripped black jeans with tears at the knees and stars sewed on with different material. He was wearing a modified bucket hat that had the top cut off for his hair, his eyes seemingly becoming the visor, and finally two horns appearing off the side of his head with a small star tail swaying behind him. This person grinned and reached out his hand, putting his other hand on his hips
“I’m NowDoTheHarlemShake, or Harlem since that’s too long. The guy beside me is Dued1, or just Dued, and we’re the guys who made The Normal Elevator and Work at a Pizza Place.” The guy—now Harlem—said
Luke lit up with recognition when Harlem said their names and games, remembering the games popping up a lot when Builderman would talk about trending games at the time during their boring meetings. The two were practically infamous, the creators behind the largest realms in the world. If Luke remembered right, a lot of people even live in Dued’s game, making it a sort of society with the pizza place at the centre
“Oh! How nice to meet you both! My name is StickMasterLuke, or Stick or Luke, I respond to any of the three.” Luke grinned, knowing it wasn’t exactly seen because of his hood obstructing his face, but it was the thought that counted. He reached out and shook Harlem’s hand, tilting his head in curiosity. “To what do I owe the pleasure of meeting you two?”
“We’re heading around meeting some of the people who've created other popular games.” Dued said, a smile on his face as he stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets. “Yours is insane, I would’ve never come up with it on my own.”
Harlem nodded in agreement, looking out towards the current disaster. “To control disasters like that? Yeah, no, I can barely control the elevator sometimes.”
Luke laughed, waving away their compliments with the flick of his hand, though he tried to hide his confusion. Almost everyone who knew him knew he was an Admin who could control the weather—the disasters were caused by a flick of his finger if he wanted them to—so it was confusing for the two to praise him for it
“Thank you both. Your games are marvelous as well. I talk about and praise them often back home.” Luke said, watching as the two seemed to grow embarrassed
“Really?” Harlem asked, causing Luke to nod
“Yes! It is quite impressive to see what you two have made with the resources available to you.” Luke snickered at the memory of Telamon whining about people calling his game boring as Dued’s game shot up to being one of the top games of that year. The two seemed embarrassed by the sudden praise, both looking sheepish in different ways
If Luke was any bolder, he would have called them both cute, but he wasn’t, so he didn’t
“Well thank you, that’s high praise coming from you.” Dued said this time, the grin on his face so wide Luke’s own face almost hurt. He felt his face heat up at the compliment, huffing softly before Harlem grabbed his attention
“Hey, so we were thinking of getting a couple of developers together to hang around and help each other out with ideas for updates to games, maybe some collaborations y’know?” Harlem said, elbowing Dued who glared at Harlem with a small pout at the elbowing. Dued rolled his eyes and pulled out a piece of paper that he handed over to Luke
Luke accepted the paper, reading it up and down as he blinked at the words. It was a simple invite, similar to the children’s birthday invites Luke’s seen John get sometimes from random Robloxian children. It gave a place and time—Dued’s happy home in a few days around lunch—and mentioned the creators of some other games that would be there, like Heli-Wars and Jailbreak. As Luke looked through the small list of developers, he was a bit surprised that he didn’t see Telamon on there
“You haven’t invited the creator of Sword Fights on the Heights?" Luke asked, looking up at the two. Harlem smiled nervously while Dued glanced away, rubbing the back of his neck
“It’s kinda a non-Admin thing? I mean, we like the Admins, but they’re kinda intimidating when they wanna be.” Harlem explained as Dued nodded, not seeing how Luke’s entire body tensed at those words
It was right then that Luke made two very important realizations. One, these two did not know he was an Admin—which explained why they didn’t know he caused the disasters; Luke felt blind now for not connecting the dots—, and two, if Luke accepted this invitation, he had a chance to make friends outside of HQ for the first time.
It’s not like he didn’t like his fellow Admins and Mods, he did enjoy their company a lot, but he had been talking to them all for what felt like years at this point, and only talking to the same people over and over again about the same things started to feel dull. This was a chance to make friends with new people; to maybe have a life outside of being an Admin and making disasters in his games. Luke bit his cheek as he looked at the paper that would give him access to Dued’s happy home, a pit slowly growing in his stomach. He opened his mouth to decline, but paused
Well, he could just attend one party, right? Afterwards he could tell them he was an Admin and then he could move on with his life. Or maybe if they found out he was an Admin later they wouldn’t be afraid of him, but that’s a stretch
Regardless, Clockwork already teased Luke enough for his solitary nature, he couldn’t imagine what would happen if somehow him declining this invite somehow reached its way back to him. He shivered at the thought. So he took a deep breath and nodded, looking up to look at the two of them
“I’ll be there.” Luke said, smiling at the two devs in front of him. They both seemed so relieved that he agreed, which caused him to snicker a bit
“Great!” Dued chirped happily, clasping his hands together as he grinned at Luke. “We’ll see you then?”
“Yup. I don’t think I’m doing anything, and if I am I’ll offload it to a friend.” Luke snickered, knowing any admin would do it if he begged enough, but he couldn’t help but smile at the despair that would be on their faces
The three glanced over as the disaster finished up, everyone spawning back on the platform with some cheers and sounds of agony. Luke laughed a little at it and turned back to look at the two in front of him
“I gotta get back to the game. Thank you for the invite, it was nice to meet you two.” Luke said, smiling as he gestured for his cloud to come down to his side
“Yeah of course! It was nice to meet you too Luke!” Harlem said, grinning ear to ear
“Yeah! See you at the party!” Dued said, waving as the two left the game
Luke stared at where the two were for a second before an uncontrollable grin spread across his face, making him look at the paper that still rested in his hand. It seemed like such a small thing, but that one piece of paper was going to be his key to maybe gaining some friends outside of HQ
He placed the paper in his inventory and hopped back up into his cloud, joy flooding through every bone in his body before he turned and started up the next round, deciding to do a volcano this time
He could only hope his restraint from telling them that he was an Admin wouldn’t bite him in the ass later