Work Text:
Purple was relaxing on the PC with the others. They were planning to adventure in Minecraft in a little while, but Yellow had a project she wanted to finish beforehand, and Second was on the phone, so it was just Purple, Green, Red, and Blue relaxing on the couch.
Second got off their phone call.
“Hey, my brother is wanting to check in on us. Everyone cool with that?” They asked, mostly looking at Purple.
“I didn’t know you had a brother,” she said. “As long as he’s chill, I’m fine with that.”
“He’s fine. He’s pretty shy, he usually just checks on us and leaves, or I go over there and let him know, but I suggested he explore Minecraft with us some. And then he told me he’s apparently been living there since…everything, so I’m thinking we just meet him there.”
“Are you guys close?” She asked. “I’ve never heard you talk about him.”
Second shrugged and made a grimacing expression like they weren’t quite sure.
“Not really, I finally got his number after the last time he stopped by, and I had to give him a phone to get that number.”
“He’s off grid?”
“Yeah, I don’t think that’ll be changing any time soon. You sure you’re okay with going to meet him?”
Purple shrugged, not sure why Second was checking in so much.
“Like I said, as long as he’s chill I don’t mind. I’m just surprised to hear you have a brother. Does everyone else know him?”
Blue gave a so-so gesture.
“We kind of know him, he only really talks to Second though,” she explained calmly. “I don’t think it’s a standoffish thing, I think he’s just skittish and doesn’t know how to handle us all. We’ve been talking about ways we might be able to get more one on one with him to see if that helps.”
“It’s actually shocking just how skittish he is,” Red commented casually. “Guy’s a force of nature.”
“Well, he’s always a precursor to trouble,” Green mumbled and Second shot him a look. “What? He is. Until recently, every time we saw him he dragged us into some deep shit.”
“He’s been through a lot. And I want to get to know him better, sue me,” Second said and turned back to Purple.
“I should warn you that he’s not great socially. If he seems rude he’s probably not trying to be, I don’t think he ever actually spent enough time around people to figure them out.”
Purple found it a little strange how worried Second was to introduce their brother. If anything, they should be more worried about introducing her to him. It already sounded like he might be a bit protective, and if he knew about her history with the group, he might already not have a high opinion of her. She knew Alan had been wary of her being on the PC when she was first stabilizing her friendship with them all, especially after she had messed around in his files.
And she knew plenty of awkward people, honestly, the Color Gang were probably the strangest people she had ever come across. She didn’t think they really got just how strange it was that their caretaker was a human. She certainly wouldn’t mind if Second’s brother didn’t quite follow social norms or was just a shy person. The only thing she thought would actually cause an immediate dislike was if he was openly hostile toward her, and with how shy it sounded like he was, she doubted that would be an issue.
So she agreed to go meet him. Second gave her a few vague explanations of who he was. Alan had apparently drawn him about seven years before them, though he hadn’t been around when Second was drawn. His relationship with Alan was strained, but generally cordial, and he had shown up about four years after Second was drawn to “deal with a virus.” Some vague drama was mentioned, something Purple knew had gone on more recently, but nobody seemed very willing to discuss. It was either something that was still very raw for them, or something secretive. Whatever the reason, Second’s brother had kicked it off.
She got the impression that the opinions of the Color Gang varied between them all. Second clearly wanted to be in somewhat regular communication, and Blue seemed open to getting to know him, as well as Red. Yellow seemed mostly indifferent, but cautious, and oddly Green seemed the most hesitant to trust. It struck her as odd, as Green had been the most open to her after everything, but if her theory that recent events had been particularly stressful, she could understand if there might be more emotional weight to it.
Whatever the matter was, she had been invited to meet him, and she was planning to be on good behavior as long as he was.
Her plan immediately fell apart when Second disappeared into a small Minecraft house and returned with the last person she ever wanted to see.
The Angel of Death, destroyer of Newgrounds and one of the Outernet’s most renowned terrorists, and the object of some of Purple’s nightmares for years.
“That is not your brother,” Purple said in a dumbfounded tone to Second, turning to them and trying desperately to hide her fear at seeing the actual Angel of Death.
“What? Yeah he is, Alan drew me, he drew him, we have the same shape, he’s my brother.”
“Your brother. Is not. The Angel of Death.” She said it like she could will this whole thing out of existence.
The Angel’s eyes widened and he quickly looked back at his small house. Second said he had been in Minecraft while it was still in the beta stages, and it seemed like he had never left that stage of the game, exclusively using oak and cobblestone for the house, and not really even messing with upside down stairs for the roof. He did have a torch flower in his front garden though, and Purple could only assume it was a present.
“I don’t need to come with you all,” he spoke up. His voice was softer than Purple expected, raspy along the edges, but it sounded more like the rasp was coming from an injury than anything else. “I’ll stay out of your way, you won’t even know I’m here.”
Why did he look so scared of Purple? He was the one who burned an entire site to the ground while she and hundreds of others ran away or died trying. She remembered him well. Dull red eyes, void of emotion, had briefly rested upon her as she tried to keep up with her father and make sure her mother was keeping up at the same time, and he had flown away shortly after.
“Well, you were happy for people to know you were there a decade ago,” she spat and everyone was immediately on edge, recognizing that this could easily turn into a fight and it would not be pretty.
“I didn’t really want to make a big entrance,” he said quietly and Purple didn’t like that at all. If he didn’t want to make a big entrance, why did he burn a source site to the ground?
“Are you kidding me!? Not a big entrance? You destroyed a source site! Two of them! And did damage to some of the core ones on the internet! Do you know how many people died? Do you know what that did to my family? How can you sit in your house and read books while there’s people still grieving those who they lost during that? How do you live with yourself—why are you running from me?”
Chosen was backing away into his house like a frightened animal, shoulders hunched, and in a position that had him ready to tank a hit. As if Purple could have hurt him anyway.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Please just—I’ve been punished for it already, you don’t need to—please.”
Purple stepped back. None of this made sense. Why was the Angel of Death begging her not to hurt him? He was supposed to be terrifying, destructive, a force of nature, but when she looked at him properly, he just seemed exhausted and scared.
“What is going on?” She asked loudly, baffled.
“Okay,” Second said awkwardly. “So nobody is going to be punishing anyone else, so let’s establish that. Purple, I assume you’ve encountered him?”
She glared at him, not taking her eyes off the Angel while she answered Second.
“On Newgrounds. When he and his friend burnt everything to the ground.”
Second noticeably wilted.
“You were there.” It wasn’t a question. They were just stating a fact. Purple nodded firmly. “Okay, I didn’t know that when I brought you here. I’m sorry. Uh, well Chosen, this is Purple. We met her in the game a few years ago.”
“Chosen?” Purple asked, unimpressed. She supposed that The Angel’s name was never actually officially known, and people had just called him that for years.
“The Chosen One,” Second elaborated quietly. They had positioned themself so they could run between them if they needed to. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t know what to say. No one seemed to be moving this conversation around. Green stood just behind her, and whether he was there to keep her from rushing at The Angel or to be ready to jump in to defend her, she was unsure. Blue and Yellow lingered near one another, and Red stood next to Second with his own support, but nobody seemed like they wanted to actually approach and comfort The Angel. Second might want to actually, but was refraining from doing so.
“That’s your name?” She asked The Angel.
Chosen shrugged. He wouldn’t meet her eye.
“I guess so,” he mumbled. “Never really lived up to it.”
“You certainly did not. Unless you were chosen to bring despair upon hundreds.”
“More like chosen to get my ass beat every chance given,” he said, still quiet, but there was a tone of resentment in his voice. He took a sharp breath and broke his gaze from Purple’s to look at Second, who looked terribly uncomfortable. “You kids are still doing alright on the PC?” Second nodded. “Any incidents?” Second shook their head. “Good.”
He backed into his house the rest of the way and shut the door behind him. Watching through the gaps in the oak door, Purple saw him climb a ladder into the upper floor of the house and vanish from eyesight.
Nobody seemed to know what to do. Second was watching Purple with a guilty expression.
“Purple, I—”
“It’s fine,” she interrupted. She didn’t know how she felt about any of this and didn’t want to get into it until she felt more stable. If she decided she was upset with Second, she would just let them know later, after she had the chance to think about why. “Let’s go exploring.” She turned quickly away from Chosen’s house.
The rest of the adventure was smooth. She got the impression that Second was both avoiding her and wanting to talk about what had just happened, but beyond that everyone was doing their absolute best to be normal. She kept catching glances of worry from each of them, but she simply powered through and marched through the game as they reached a woodland mansion.
As she worked in tandem with all of them to handle evokers and vexes and vindicators, she kept thinking back to how The Angel—Chosen was acting.
There was so much more fear around him than she ever thought possible. He didn’t look weak, per-se. No, with the way he stood, positioned himself, he still seemed a perfectly capable fighter, and while he hadn’t thrown any fire her way, it was very clear that Chosen could hold his own even without her needing to see it first-hand. And yet, even with all that power, he seemed to have an equal amount of fear.
Her father had always said that if she was strong enough, she would never need to fear anything. He had been wrong about a lot of things, but she had often thought he was right about that.
And as she kept rolling around the image of the Angel of Death standing by an old fashioned minecraft house, preparing to protect himself but afraid that he would need to, she recognized that he had far more scars than someone of his skill set should.
A good fighter had scars in battle. A great one didn’t, and she thought Chosen was a great one. And he wasn’t just any fighter, he had world-ending powers, he should be able to fend off just about anyone. So where did they come from? Who or what had gotten close enough to leave a lasting mark?
Second had said he had been through a lot. What had they been talking about?
She groaned internally. It was so much easier to think of the terrorist as a monster that was just pure evil. It was harder to consider that there might be more to him than just destruction and pain. There could never be a good reason for what happened, but perhaps there was more going on to him than just a murderous rampage.
The image of what she had wanted those months ago, to stand with King with the ability to end the world she knew had life within it, flashed through her head and she knew that if she wanted to be fair to Second’s brother and herself, she ought to do more than to spit verbal fire at him and curse him to die.
The group broke for the day. Second tried to apologize to Purple. At this point, she had decided she wasn’t mad at them.
“It’s just unfortunate,” she said. “You couldn’t have known about that history. I’m more concerned with the fact that you seem ready to stand with him. You know that won’t go over well with most people, right? Even if you are brothers, just about everyone outside the PC you meet is going to have some suspicions that you’re in league with him as a terrorist?”
They shuffled. “Trust me, I know. Look, I’m not going to defend him to you, I don’t think that’s fair. I’m just going to say that he’s a complicated guy, but he’s got a good heart and I want to give him the chance to use it. He’s gotten us—me, into trouble, but he’s never actually tried to hurt us, if you’re worried about that.”
She reassured them that she wasn’t really upset with Second for the whole thing, more worried and still in a bit of shock over it. Unless Second happened to also have world-ending powers, she was concerned that if Chosen suddenly decided that the peaceful hermit life wasn’t for him, they probably wouldn’t be able to win that fight.
Purple kept thinking over the interaction for weeks. Meeting Chosen in person, and the way all of that had happened was completely incongruent with what she thought she knew about him, and it was causing some serious cognitive dissonance. She asked questions to the whole group to see if she could get a better picture of it all.
Second was a good source of what he was apparently like on a more personal level, but seemed a little hesitant to describe why exactly they were as close as they were.
Red said he wanted to be friends, but he was so quiet that he was hard to have a conversation with. He went on to complain about one word answers to questions, and a general feeling that Chosen wanted to be left alone most of the time.
Blue said she felt more sorry for him than anything else, that she could get a general idea of what had happened to him from observing him, but that she didn’t really know what she could do to help because he wouldn’t let anyone but Second get near him, despite all of them having attempted to interact with him directly.
Yellow and Green were a little more vocal in their reservations about him. Green said that his influence and interactions in the group had put them in actual peril more than he was comfortable with, but he was willing to accept him into their lives if he would actually take some steps toward having a relationship with them. Yellow said she just associated him more with some more frightening moments, and would need some time to spend time with him without something going very wrong to be able to ease up more.
It was a lot of information that all just came around to the same answer; “we don’t know him that well, he seems alright, but he’s not been around enough for us to get to know him.”
Which also meant that she couldn’t figure him out through them, and she was more interested to figure him out than what she thought she should be.
It was almost like something of a fixation. She had a single person connection to one of the most infamous individuals in the history of the Outernet, and he seemed so unlike everything. Every art piece she saw, every small way the Outernet had been changed by the Newgrounds attack just didn’t fit the image of the worried figure who wouldn’t go more than a few blocks away from his cottage in minecraft with a classic garden in the woods.
She had to take matters into her own hands.
Purple didn’t know what she was doing. She should not be going to probably pick a fight with The Angel of Death. The Chosen One.
But she had a question repeated by hundreds over the years, and she might be the only person willing and able to ask it. It would feel like a disservice to everyone who wanted to know if she didn’t take this opportunity. She had been reassured by Second that Chosen wouldn’t hurt her. At least, not unless she hit first.
She took a deep breath and knocked on the door to his old fashioned house.
The door creaked open and stopped suddenly when Chosen recognized who was at the door. She watched him tense and again prepare to handle a fight, but he didn’t immediately go on the offense. It seemed odd that he might be a defensive fighter, considering everything, but that was why she was here.
“Why did you do it?” She got straight to the point. Her tone was surprisingly even. Don’t threaten him, don’t show weakness. Walk the line. She reminded herself.
“Is anyone else with you?” He asked softly, voice still raspy and a little scared. She shook her head.
“I need to know.”
Chosen sighed and creaked the door open for her to go inside, and walked in before she set foot in the house. She followed him in, prepared to persist for her answer, but he had just placed himself near a back door and was standing with his back to a wall.
“I owe an explanation I guess, you can sit if you want.”
Purple warily took a seat at his kitchen table that was set by a window, overlooking the garden. She didn’t mind the setup. She was closest to the front door, and he was closest to the back door. Both of them had an easy way out should they need it.
“Why?” She asked once they were settled.
“Dark wanted to. The Dark Lord I mean. I thought after she was done she would settle down and we could share the peace,” he explained sadly.
“What, so she said ‘let’s kill everything,’ and you just went along with it?”
“Not in those words,” he didn’t meet her eye. “We would get to a site and she would say ‘let’s have some fun.’”
“And then you would start killing everything? Was that fun for you?”
Chosen shook his head, rubbing his arm a little. Honestly, this was going better than Purple had thought. She had half expected him to refuse her questions and kick her out of his house, or barely answer her questions at all. But his next words caught her in a way she wasn’t ready for.
“I didn’t want her to leave me behind.”
“She was destroying everything,” Purple argued, but her argument lacked the kind of vindictiveness she had before. His words struck a chord within her that she wished didn’t.
“She was my first friend. My only friend. I had been alone for years. I didn’t have anyone else.” He looked so numb it almost hurt. “I thought she would be mad at me if I told her I didn’t want to, and leave. I had never been allowed to say no to destruction before, and I didn’t know how to say it to someone I actually…liked.” He watched Purple’s face anxiously. “I should have said something. I should have done more. It doesn’t make it okay, I was just a coward. I’m sorry.”
Purple was internally screaming obscenities. Of course he had to be more complicated than what everyone thought. It was a bad reason, a terrible one really. He was willing to do awful things just for the goal of getting to keep one person, who wasn’t even that great, in his life. And he hadn’t seemed to care for the consequences for everyone else at the time.
Fuck, he’s like me. She thought.
Purple sighed heavily. “You needed someone to chase you up a mountain.”
Chosen looked confused.
“What does that mean?”
Purple was quiet. She stared out the window at the garden of Minecraft flowers, well-taken care of flowers. Looking at the grass, it seemed like he was even watering them, he didn’t even need to water Minecraft flowers. It just made the colors a little more vibrant.
“I almost helped destroy this game,” she said finally, the confession feeling heavy. “I was stupid. I wanted someone to validate me so badly, to make me feel like I was actually good for something that I couldn’t see that I was just being used.” Chosen turned his head to the side and looked out the window he was near that faced the woods. She had spotted a small chicken coop in the direction he was looking on her way over. “King, Mango, he wanted to destroy the game. He had a better reason, I admit, he wanted revenge on it for taking his daughter. She died from some corruption, and he held the game responsible. But I didn’t know that, I just wanted him to look at me like I was worth something and tell me ‘good job, I’m proud of you.’” She laughed bitterly. “I tricked and trapped them, stole, manipulated, lied, and I gave him exactly what he needed to be able to carry out his plan. And then he left me to them when he had what he wanted. I’m lucky they’re as wonderful as they are. I ran through a portal and Green chased me. I won’t get into what he said, but he made me realize what I was doing was wrong, it wasn’t worth it, and that I wasn’t as alone as I thought I was.”
Chosen pulled a single piece of cobblestone out of his inventory and turned it around a few times. She could only imagine what he was thinking.
“But the game is still here,” he said finally.
“Yes. We all fought against the King, but what actually got him to stop was…me,” she smiled faintly. “I stood against him. He wasn’t as lost as he thought he was. Turns out he really did feel some affection for me and ditched the plan when it was almost too late.”
“So if you had asked him to stop, he would’ve?” Chosen asked. She shook her head.
“No. I don’t think he would have until he saw that I might die from it all. I did turn on him in the middle of the fight, and he kept going. Even when I did start fighting him, we lost the actual fight. We’re doing much better now, he’s been healing and he treats me well now.” She glanced back at Chosen. “But what I’m saying is that I think I get it.” She laughed softly. “And I hate that I do, but hey, here we are.”
Chosen stayed silent for a long time, so much so that Purple was almost worried he hadn’t heard her or hadn’t been listening. But no, he had asked a couple questions during her speech so he must have been listening.
“But you didn’t kill hundreds,” he said eventually.
“I almost did,” she said back. “This game is full of life. The villagers have lives, I can imagine other sticks have probably found some kind of sanctuary here, animals are smarter than you think, and countless builds and works of art would have been gone because of a man’s grief and a child’s need for approval.”
Chosen studied her, red eyes boring into her soul. He didn’t seem like he was trying to be intimidating, but he really didn’t need to try very hard with everything she knew about him.
“Why did you come here?” He asked finally.
“Because people have wanted to know why it happened for years, and I had the opportunity to ask.” She broke eye contact. “And because you’re my friend’s brother and they have too much anxiety for me to leave this hostile without trying anything.”
“That’s nice of you.”
She hummed and went back to trying to read Chosen. He really was nothing like she had imagined he would be like. In the Outernet, he was almost a mythic figure, a harbinger of death and destruction, an elusive terrorist that hadn’t struck in years, but people still wondered if his wrath would ever return. Here, he just seemed like a shy and broken person who liked flowers and had a sunroof.
“What happened to you?” She asked.
He gave her a perplexed look and his facial muscles tightened in small ways, microexpressions too fast for Purple to decipher flashed across his face.
“What are you asking me?”
“You have all this power and you’ve been acting like I’m going to beat you with a stick and win somehow. You’re all jittery and Blue described you as skittish before we came over.”
“Did she?” he asked, a little surprised. “You know what the others think of me?”
“Others?”
“The Second Coming’s friends. The other colors. You know what they think of me?”
The question struck Purple as odd, along with the usage of what could only be Second’s full name, but she didn’t have the energy to get into everything that implied. She hadn’t expected him to care much, everyone had really had the same story that he was only really willing to talk to Second.
“I—they don’t seem to know what to think,” she said slowly. “You don’t talk to them. You—why are you asking that?”
“I wanted to give them space. I keep breaking into their lives. Second said they wanted to be closer, but I doubt the rest of them do. But they’re all his friends, so I guess I just—I don’t know, I was just wondering.”
Cursors, she was seeing the social awkwardness Second was describing. They had all been actively trying to reach out and he didn’t seem to know what to do with that. Did he think they were lying about wanting him around or did he genuinely not notice? But from what he had said, and what Second had said, she guessed he had simply never known what it was like for someone to pursue him in a positive way. Perhaps he never considered the possibility. Purple had chased the feeling for years, but she had experienced it before and wanted it again. He didn’t even seem to know it was possible. Like what he had was all he might ever get, and that there would never be anything else. That this was the epitome of goodness and peace, and it could only be experienced alone.
“Red said he’s been trying to talk to you though,” She argued calmly. “Yellow literally told me she thinks she’ll be more comfortable around you when she spends more time around you, so did Green. And Blue said she doesn’t know enough about you to know what to do. They all want to hang out and you’re giving them nothing.”
Chosen got a small hopeful glint in his eyes and shifted a little. The movement reminded her of how Second got when they were feeling awkward and anxious.
“Oh,” they said in a small voice.
Purple watched them shift more and fidget with the cobblestone block, which upon closer inspection looked like the old, grainy texture of cobblestone.
“They’re a good group,” she said, hoping to encourage him a little more. At this point, she understood why Blue said she felt bad for him. She didn’t feel like she had much room to judge, so why not help like she had been helped already. “I probably wouldn’t be the person I am today if it weren’t for them giving me the chance to be that person.” Purple could hardly believe she was encouraging the terrorist that had haunted a certain part of her nightmares for years to connect with the people she held most dear. “If they’re trying to reach out to you, I really recommend reaching back.”
“I didn’t think they wanted me around,” he said. “I didn’t even really think Second wanted me around until they asked me for my phone number. I was trying to make it easier for them.”
Purple shook her head slowly.
“What messed you up, man?” she asked, trying to keep the tone light.
He let out a quiet, humorless chuckle.
“Everything, I guess. Been around since 2007 and living here is the first time I’ve ever felt free.”
“How long have you lived here?”
“Uh, maybe six months? The days blend. But yeah, um, hard life I guess. Enslavement, toxic friendships—Second’s used the word abusive, but I don’t know if that’s right. I mean, who’s heard of an abusive friendship? Near death experiences, being hunted, captured, tortured, humiliated, drowned, the works. It’s just one bad thing after another and I’m tired.”
“That’s a lot,” Purple said. She didn’t know what else to say. She wondered if she could get any more information, and there was something there that might answer more questions she had. “Who managed that? I’m not trying to boost your ego or anything, but I’m pretty sure you’re one of the most powerful sticks in the Outernet.”
Chosen looked down.
“Someone who had every reason to hate me and decided to do something about it. It doesn’t matter now, I live here and that’s enough.”
Purple could tell that was close to the end of that discussion. And he had given her more than enough information now that she was less compelled to take out any kind of revenge or project any anger onto him.
He really was skittish. The whole time they had spoken, even when Purple was no longer hostile toward him, he had essentially been bracing himself to be hurt. She had barely moved, not because she was scared, but because she believed that moving too quickly might set him off.
“Is that what you were talking about when you said you had been punished enough?” She asked quietly. Chosen nodded once.
“I’m sorry that happened,” she said. “No one deserves that.”
Chosen’s mouth opened and then closed and he looked away sharply. Something about his reaction told Purple she had said something upsetting, but as she went back over her words she couldn’t tell what it could be.
“Um, listen. This has been a good talk. Is there anything else you need? Or want to ask me?”
“How about a favor?” Purple asked.
“Okay…” he looked suspicious and a little scared. “What is it?”
“Go on an adventure with us. In Minecraft. It can be anything, but I want you to try to get to know the rest of the gang.”
Chosen bit his lip some, but relaxed, probably because her favor wasn’t anything particularly strenuous.
“You’re sure they’ll want me around?”
“Take it from the person who you probably have the worst history with in the group, if I want you there, so will they.”
She gathered her things and politely said goodbye to Chosen. This had gone far better than she expected. He wasn’t a great conversationalist, but what Second had said, that he had a good heart, seemed accurate.
It felt somewhat selfish, but Purple supposed it was only right she offered to him what had been offered to her. As much as she hated to admit it, they weren’t that different. She just hoped Chosen would be as open to it as she had been. She would feel sorry for him if he let the opportunity go.
It felt surprisingly good as well. She didn’t realize she had been holding on to so much resentment toward him, and she was certain there were people out there who had more, but for herself, it felt nice to not have to feel like she should put energy toward hating him. There were enough people in her life she held anger towards. Her father, her mother’s lying doctors, landlords for backing out of agreements because she was an independent kid, and every system that forced her to live on her own. Having one less source of anger was just…peaceful.
And wasn’t what both of them were looking for?
—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 week later
Second went to Chosen’s Minecraft house on their own. After the incident with Purple, they wanted to make sure he was doing alright, they knew he was touchy about people knowing his past.
It had taken months of coaxing for him to open up about how he actually felt during his time with Alan, even though Second already had gotten the rundown of what had happened, and it had been difficult to reassure him that his involvement in the Newgrounds Massacre, while horrific, was not going to drive Second away on its own, especially after he had quietly described what it had been like in the first days away from Alan’s PC. It was undeniably bad, but even Second wondered what they would have been willing to do to keep their friends by their side after something like what Chosen had been through.
How far would they have gone? They didn’t know, but they didn’t feel that Chosen deserved to be alone forever. He wasn’t hurting anyone in Minecraft, and the game seemed like a good place for him to live in peace, away from the Outernet, away from the PC.
They knocked on Chosen’s door and identified themselves loudly enough that Chosen would be able to hear.
The door creaked open and they were allowed inside without a greeting, but the lack of hesitance was greeting enough for them.
“How are you doing?” Second asked.
“Fine. I like your friend.”
Second was taken aback. They assumed he wouldn’t really like any of their friends after what had happened.
“My friend? Which…one?”
“The Purple one. She came here on her own. We spoke. I like her. She speaks well, she’s plucky, she’s honest, we had a good talk. She’s a good friend for you.”
Second couldn’t believe it. Chosen had barely said a word to any of their friends and all of a sudden he was on good terms with Purple after one talk? Purple. The girl who had apparently been on Newgrounds and had every reason to hate him? And she had just decided to come over and sort it out?
“I didn’t know she came here on her own. You said you had a good talk?”
“Yes. Gave me some good perspective. She wanted to know why I did everything and I thought I owed her an answer. I’m surprised she accepted it.” He paused for a moment. Then, “Um, one thing. She asked me to come along with you all on one of your adventures. Are you and your friends okay with that?”
Second smiled brightly at the request. They had been trying to get Chosen on one of their adventures for months. They didn’t think Chosen noticed how excited they were that he wanted to come with them all because he kept his gaze averted.
“I can stay out of the way or keep quiet if you all prefer, she just asked that I come with you all and I agreed to ask, and I don’t want to disappoint.”
“We would love for you to come!” Second said quickly and eagerly. “Do you want to explore or do you want a fighting adventure? We’ve been wanting to try out a trial chamber, but we’ve also been talking about digging up some trail ruins because there’s a disk Green wants to find, and we think it’ll be fun. We might try to restore them.”
Chosen smiled softly, like he wasn’t expecting Second to be as excited about bringing him, and he really appreciated the choices. It was more considerate than he ever considered a person could be, but Second had a way of figuring out how to help in good ways.
“If it’s the same to all of you, I might like the ruins. It sounds calmer.”
“Ruins it is!” Second clapped excitedly. “You’re going to have so much fun, we’ve been doing better about having relaxed adventures. I’ll text you when we have a day and we’ll come get you from the house.”
Second stayed over for a little while longer, just chatting. They were often happier to talk than Chosen, but Chosen was often happy to listen.
When the left for the day and bid farewell, Second had the optimistic feeling that Chosen might finally be getting closer to becoming part of the group. Cursors knew he needed it. He deserved a break after everything and they were glad they could give him the opportunity.