Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

It's October of 2022. Twins Cary and Michael lived at their house on the afternoon sunshine in San Francisco, sitting on the couch at the living room and talked to each other. At that time, they had finished discussing.

"Yeah, I'm gonna go animate my scene now," Cary said, zealous.

"Alright."

They both parted. Michael lied down on the couch, on his phone.

Meanwhile, Cary went to his bedroom, and sat at his desk. He booted up his computer, opened Adobe Animate, and just when he was about to select the characters' assets file for animating, he stopped to find out that some of them had been turned into something else. Odd. His scene was supposed to have several characters that all had been overwritten.

He stared at his monitor. His hands slightly loosened on the desk. Then, his eyes went to the door, he turned around, and called Michael.

"Hey! Come here, please!"

As soon as he heard him, he put his phone down, left the couch, and stepped into Cary's bedroom.

"Huh? What do you want?"

He explained, "I... I can't animate right now, because the assets had turned into something else for some reason! But, they're kinda familiar though."

"Can I take a look at your computer?"

"Uh... sure!" Cary let him see the asset files on his computer.

He got up from the desk as his brother came to look at the monitor.

"Hmm... Didn't you play this game on Roblox like, 7 months ago?" He asked.

"Um... Yeah, with my friends and the creator of it, Alex!" Mentioning its creator, Cary tried to remember the game name.

"What was the game name again?" He murmured. "Find the Markers? Yeah! He made it! And he's also the reccomender of Marker in BFDI!"

Michael looked at him, "I think everyone knows that."

Cary went back to the original issue. "Right. Back to the topic; I don't want to animate these things, because the dissonance would make it very weird, and we don't want that yet. Can we even fix this?"

Looking back at his monitor, he suspected a virus had hijacked the computer. "Did a virus do all of this?"

He shaked his head, "No. I didn't download anything suspicious! What could it be?" He interrogated.

Michael replied, uninterested, "I don't know."

Thinking about the virus, he realized something. "Wait! Now that I think about it, I'm gonna check my computer. Be right back."

"Okay."

Michael left and went to his own bedroom. He sat down at his own desk. He opened Finder on his computer, and found the folder for the assets. Upon clicking on it, he found the same thing; they have been overwritten. However, he paid attention to names in some of the files...

Meanwhile, Cary hopped on Discord to send a message at the Jacknjellify crew server in the animation channel with a screenshot attached in the middle of a conversation:

"hello! i was about to start animating today, but the assets had been replaced with roblox's find the markers thing for some reason! so, i can't animate today ☹"

Next, he typed in hope of replies coming:

"thoughts?"

He sensed Discord's notification sound. Because, some replies flooded by, with various reactions from different people. Some replied that their assets also got overwritten and was confused. Some also talked about some source files of BFDI on Google Drive had been changed. Cary let his breath out, knowing he wasn't alone.

However, a message from one of the animators, replied to him, urging to kill the Markers and telling him and his brother that they both would be teleported to another world:

"KILL them"

"youre about to get teleported to what you made"

"the name of the files also say something"

Seeing that, he stood up. His hands got out of his keyboard, his eyes at the monitor, shocked. This couldn't be true, right? He sat on two knees, and checked the file again. Before he read the message, he heard a footstep, and...

"Uhh... Bro?" Michael came back from his bedroom to see his brother in disbelief.

"Are you alright?"

Cary turned his head to him, "Uhh... I guess?"

Michael sighed in relief, "Glad you're fine, because apparently it wasn't a virus."

"If it's not a virus, then..."

"Also, I discovered a hidden message for my files. Did you see that on yours?" Michael remarked about the name of files he had looking on.

"Florence said so."

"Really? Let me check." He went to Cary's desk, and bent his body forward. He read that animator's message, and then switched the window to the file select in Adobe Animate.

"Oh. That's the same message!" He asserted.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah! Let's read it together."

The twins whispered the message to themselves, "Cary... Michael... You..."

"Huh? We are next? What do you mean by this? Like, is someone about to kill us?" Cary furrowed his eyebrows.

"Or even worse, we will turn into one of them?!" He elaborated.

Michael pointed out about the place in the hidden message. "Perhaps? Also it says 'MEET US IN GOIKY,' but it's impossible to go there, since it's just a fictional place we made."

Cary came up with something. "Right. So, can we delete all of these and make a new one?"

"Yeah, do it."

He held the mouse, selected all the files that had been overwritten by the Markers, and deleted them. A few seconds later, those files popped up again, like it was never deleted in the first place.

"Huh?" He exhaled.

He tried it again, but the files kept popping up after being deleted.

"It doesn't work! This has never happened to me before!" He complained. Michael stood up.

"Uhm..."

Before he said anything, they both heard Cary's phone ring on the left side of the desk. He reached it, and he saw an incoming call from an unknown caller.

"Should we answer this number?"

"Umm... No. Decline it."

Michael tapped the red button on the phone, thinking it was just a random number.

They both caught the notification sound from Cary's computer. Cary turned his head, switched back to Discord, and read a new message from another animator:

"Answer the call NOW"

They then deleted the message and typed:

"NO GER OFF MY ACCOUNT NOW"

"Oh my god... This is making me stressed out!" he complained.

The phone ringed again from the same number, as if someone insisted them to answer the call.

"Hhh... Fine, let's see what good it is."

Michael accepted the call, and hovered the phone to his right ear.

"Hello?"

He heard a voice similar to someone who would say something about Cheezburger on Roblox.

"Hey. Is this Cary's number?"

"Mmm... yeah, but this is Michael H calling, not him," he looked at Cary.

"Hand this over to him," they commanded.

"Alright."

He handed the phone onto Cary. He lifted his phone on his ear.

"Uh... Yes, it's Cary talking. That was my brother."

"Perfect. I knew you are the people that I was looking for," they smirked.

"So, who are you?"

The caller introduced themself, "I am Noob, the owner of Find the Markers, and--" Cary lowered his phone to his thigh.

He turned away, and whispered to Michael, "I don't remember them being the owner..."

"What? What's their name?"

"Noob. And they claimed they're now the owner of Find the Markers. I mean, what happened to Alex?"

"Uhhh... I don't know. Let me look it up real quick." Michael walked away for a quick research on his own phone. Cary lifted his phone back on his ear.

"Are you listening?! Cary!" Noob yelled because they realized Cary did not listen to their introduction.

"Uh... Yeah?" He responded.

They gloated, "Good. Now, I'm telling you that I have haxored [hacked] your computers!"

"Really? Is this the reason why our asset files had been overwritten while my brother and I talked?"

"Yup!" They revealed that they had control over the twins' computers, so they could change everything at their will, in this case, the BFDI asset files.

"Can you get them back?" He asked.

"Hm... Maybe. But in one condition; you have to defeat the Markers." This seemed sinister to him.

"In Goiky, right? Because the file names say so." He conversated on the file names he and his brother read earlier.

"Exactly."

"I... don't think we both can get there!" He objected.

"Well--" and after that, he didn't focus to their word.

He also looked back at the door, seeing Michael came into his bedroom again, and he told him he had no idea what happened to Alex.

"Bro, I don't have much information regarding what happened to him. Some said he was dead and some others said he had been retired! I have no idea what actually happened!" he rasped.

"Oh."

Michael approached him, and crouched to join the call. Noob noticed Cary got distracted again, and screamed at him on the phone, "Cary! Listen to me!"

He jerked, "Oh! So, uhh... What really happened to Alexlion? You know, the--"

"You'll never find out what happened to him!" they gleed.

"What?" Michael lifted one of his cheeks.

Cary grunted, "Hgg... I hope he's okay."

They continued, "Heh. No promises. Anyways, I can teleport you to the place you said. Of course you made it up..."

"How did you that?" Cary asked.

"The power of pro coding," they parodied TPOT.

"This cannot be real," he mumbled.

He demanded Noob, "Can you fix all of this?!"

"Welp, I'm sending both of you to Goiky in 3..." they started counting down.

Cary turned his head do Michael, "Do you think we have anything to do for this?"

"2..."

Michael shrugged, "Umm... I bet there will be some tools to defeat the Markers or some other kind. We'll see."

"1..."

"Well, this is it." Cary orated their ride to Goiky, which happened before their eyes.

Noob pressed the enter button, and the twins in the real life disappeared, quick as the speed of light. They also sent a live stream of Goiky - to be exact, at the Grasslands on North Goiky - onto the Discord server.

Chapter Text

Somewhere more cartoony, and fictional, the twins had been spawned into the grasslands, with yellow grass, some green trees and bushes, and a 5-floor hotel near them. There was also a broken Marker which had been killed by somebody else. It was sunny, yet somewhat quiet, besides some distant chatters from the hotel and a now-locked-out underground factory, and also ominous, like it was hiding something.

"Good luck, yellow twins." Noob hung up. Cary's phone played disconnect tone. Cary put his phone in his pocket... or he thought it was.

He sensed a click. He realized there was a lasso-like belt on his waist with a bunch of tools from Adobe Animate, and the phone was attached to it.

He looked at Michael, and he realized both their bodies had turned into crudely drawn stick figures, with yellow head like who they would draw themselves as. His brother also had the belt, and his head is like pizza with a slice of it removed.
Michael mumbled, "What the...?"

They both stood up.
"We're in Goiky now, huh?"
"Yeah! And we're now stick figures, and look! You have that Pac-Man mouth, huh?" Cary teased him, and giggled.
"Hey-- I mean, that's true though. I put this as my profile picture on YouTube." he pointed at himself.

They both looked around, and they didn't find any Marker, besides that dead purple one. Cary started playing with the belt's end.
"Damn, I can't find any single Marker here..." Michael sighed.
"Maybe it's hiding somewhere... Let's be cautious for now." Cary told him.

"By the way, we have this belt on our waist, with these tools from our animating program!" He also informed him about the belt.
"Oh?" Michael looked down.
"Let me see if I can... draw this..."

He pulled the paintbrush on the belt, drew Four, and colored him. However, he smeared away upon completion.
"Huh? I don't think this usually happens when we draw!"
"Um... Draw something else."
"Hmm..."

He drew an M shaped bird. It then flew away.
"Ooh... that's weird," Cary commented about the action.
"So, we don't get to draw any character here, but that bird?"
"I'm pretty sure you can draw anything other than birds, but maybe--"

With a blink of TV snow, the ominous, dark, and shadowy Marker appeared in front of their eyes before Cary could finish his sentence. It had prominent, glowing red eyes. The twins were caught off-guard by its presence.
Cary jumped, and yelled, "WHUH??? WHAT IS THAT?! WHAT IS THAT THIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNG--"

Michael took his belt off, and caught it in a way that prevented it from going anywhere. The belt wrapped it up. Cary cooled down in confusion, "Huh?"

Michael then dropped it with such force, back and forth, threw it out of their way, and zapped it by his hand, dropping it from distance. It was for defense.

He put the belt back onto his waist, smiled , and commented, "Guess that belt is useful after all."
"Mhm. Now, uhh... what do we do now?" Cary asked.

Michael looked at the hotel. He pointed at it with his thumb, and said, "Um... Let's go inside this hotel. You know, to check if anyone's there."
"Okay, let's go!" he approved.
The twins walked towards the hotel and took the stairs.

**

Meanwhile, almost all of the Failed Debuters discussed mostly about the Markers in the cozy blue room with a sub-floor at the fifth floor of the hotel. Several had been researching, and the rest goofed around. The door was blocked by a vase of plant and pillows placed at the wrong side, and locked for safety.

Tape looked at the window, and talked to Avocado, Clapboard, and Battery, who were sitting on the couch with a book, "Look! The yellow Davidians are more powerful than whoever that number is."
Unamused, Clapboard said "Seriously?"
Avocado replied to them, "I don't think those are Davidians. How can they say anything more that 'aw, seriously'? Also, Davidians are not yellow."
"Oh!"

"Uhhh... So, did we witness the creation of new sticky creatures?" They asked.

PDA stepped downstairs.
"I have a plan," they proclaimed.
Tape interrogated them, "What is it?"

They elaborated, "So, we assemble ourselves into a giant robot, maybe as tall as that giant one, and we kill the thing!" Was that enough?

Avocado looked around the room and argued, "No, because we... don't have enough people for that." There were only 24 of them.
"Uhh... Yeah!" Battery doubted their plan.

PDA widened their eyes, and yelled, "What?! That isn't enough?!"
"And, it's been proven that whoever touches it, they will turn into one of them!" Battery gave them evidence.

Clapboard added, "We have this couch and stuff in here, but... that's still not enough."

They all bickered about PDA's plan while Battery took the book and stepped back, until the FD heard someone knocking on the door outside the room.
Turns out, Cary knocked the door. "Hello? Is someone there?"
PDA shouted in frustration, "No! Nobody's here! Go away!"

If nobody was inside the room, then why did he hear a voice?
"Well, someone is definitely inside this room!" He whispered to Michael.
"I mean, we can hear them arguing or something!" He replied.

Michael tried to open the door, but it was locked.
"We're not! Go!" PDA screamed.
"Can we just let them in?" Clapboard begged them.
"Hmm... No."

Since the twins are the creators, they could've break into the door sooner. But, no. Cary looked at his belt, and picked his eraser. He threatened, "Well, we will break into the door with our erasers!"
"But, we will not kill you, I swear!" Michael informed them that they are not dangerous.

"That's the same people who killed the void thing." Clapboard continued.
"Any proof?" PDA stares at him.

"Let me prove it to you..." he gathered a key from the couch, walked to the door, then moved things that blocked the door and unlocked it using the key. He opened the door. He was greeted with the twins.
"See what they told you?"
"That's us!" Michael said.
"Hi!" Cary put his eraser down and greeted the FD.
PDA fumed up as they tweaked their body.

Avocado greeted the twins, "Hey! Come sit here!"
The twins sat on the couch. Cary locked the door and move things back to block it with the power of transform feature.

"May I ask you who you are?" Avocado interviewed them.
"Hmm... just remember us as the yellow ones," Cary gave them an answer without telling them their real names.
"Uhh... Alright."

Curious, Michael asked, "So, what's with all the Markers?"
Avocado answered, "They've been here since one just appeared out of nowhere, and started infecting some of the people here! And even brought its army!"

"And?"
"And some of the survivors had to hide, because they're getting more powerful!"

"And??"
"The numbers, including Two... tried to fight them all, but it was an epic fail, because they're too strong to defeat!" they trembled.
"So, there we are, waiting for some kind of miracle to come in."

"Oh? We can be your miracle when you need it!" Cary replied, while playing with his belt's end. Michael nodded, "Yeah!"

PDA did not believe his words. They opened their jaw in doubt, and yelled, "What?! Can you just trust them right away?"

Battery shushed, "Shhh!"
PDA blurted, "They both would be losers!"
"Before you jump to that conclusion, maybe... check yourself first."
"Yeah." Avocado agreed.

Clapboard clapped his 'hand', "Time's up, buddy."
He dragged PDA with his foot to near the windows. They groaned, "Hey! What are you doing? STOP!!"

Clapboard used Tape's tape to seal their mouth off and lock their body by wall. They grunted in anger, trying to scream, but it was no help.

"Oh! Thanks, Clappy!" Tape thanked him, but he ignored them as he walked towards Avocado, Battery and the twins. Their smile faded in disappointment.

"Whoa! How brave of you!" Cary commented on Clapboard's action.

Cary continued, "Anyway... Yes, we witnessed that scary thing... I mean Marker... I guess... Yeah! It was, like, kinda creepy, but luckily, my brother next to me managed to kill it! Isn't that cool?" He pointed at Michael.
Clapboard replied, "Oh."
Battery got impressed, "Ooh! Cool!"

Tape walked towards the couch, and praised the twins, "Your brother sealed it! I saw you both outside from the window!"
Michael smiled with confidence. "Thank you, Tapester!"
They cheered, "Yay! You're welcome, yellow guy with that mouth!"

They stared at Cary, then Michael, and got lost which who is who.
"Wait a minute... How can I tell who your brother is?! You look similar!"

Cary explained, "My brother's head looks like pizza with a slice removed. Also, he is slightly darker. And, I look like Flower without her petals according to my fans."
"Wait, you are famous? Just like her?!" Tape widened their eyes and smiled in excitement.
Cary hesitated, "Uhhh..."

Michael covered his mouth with his own hand to silence him. He whispered, "Shh! Don't tell them!"
Cary put his hand down to his thigh. "Hey!"

"Umm..." Tape sat down. They felt bad with their words as they continued to stare at the twins.

They broke the silence with a compliment. "You both sealed it, actually!" they chortled and turn their attention away from the twins.
Michael and Cary smiled again. "Ooh! Thank you, Tapey! We both appreciate it!" Cary responded.

Battery approached the twins with their book, sat on the floor, and asked, "Anything to learn about?"
Michael replied, "Are there any other Markers, other than... like that void one?"

With all the knowledge Battery had right now, they opened their book and told them about the Markers they all saw. With their fingertip touching the paper, they explained, "Okay. So, these are the normal ones, which are the same size as you saw earlier. They can infect objects like us, but not the numbers, unlike that void thing."
"Mhm..."

They turned the page forwards.
"Then, you have the Giant ones, those are way larger than the normal ones. Also, I saw it vomiting that one. I mean, you already know that," they chuckled.

They took a glimpse at the windows, then looked back and touched the next page with their point finger.
"And... you have this Robot thing. It's a fusion of 2 giant ones and it will absolutely gonna take you down!" They explained as if they were telling a horror camp story to the twins.

Battery looked at the windows, and continued, "Trust me, I've seen it."
"That's true!" Avocado followed them up.

"Oh!"
The twins absorbed the knowledge of the Markers, leaving them intrigued.  Based on the study, Cary asked, "So, do they multiply?"

Battery answered, "Yeah, some can. Look at pin one! She managed to infect Black Hole by raining her clones! Not sure for other ones though."

"Oooh..."

Battery felt like they were forgetting something...

It's the design of the Markers!
They addressed it, "Oh, I almost forgot! Some marker things do not look like the rest! Take a look at Golf Ball, Fries and Pillow!"

They touched the design on the paper, which looked like some 3D Roblox models of a golf ball, a medium portion of french fries, and a pillow which had been stretched out, and all of these had a face.

"Interesting! So, do you wanna listen to our side of this shenanigan, perhaps?"
Tape agreed, "Ooh! Sure! What made you here? I'm curious!"

Cary inhaled, but before he said anything, everyone inside the room felt stumps, multiple times, as something huge was approaching outside. It was becoming audible. Almost everyone shrilled in fear.

Cary and Michael held close together, Avocado and Battery wrote something, PDA remained stucked in panic stickiness, while Clapboard and Tape peeked to the windows to see... that Giant Marker came in?!
"Giant Marker?!" Clapboard trembled.
Avocado told him, "Oh shoot, it's the giant one that we learned earlier!"
Battery stared at Clapboard while writing, and replied, "Seriously?! It came again?! I thought it wouldn't see us!"

The scream volume increased. The room felt like a mild earthquake.
Clapboard clapped his 'hand' again and screamed, "EVERYONE, GET DOWN!"

All the FD but PDA ducked. PDA kept on throwing muffled tantrums.

As creators of BFDI, killing the Markers would be considered being a piece of cake, since they lived in their own creations. Cary let Michael off to assure, "Don't worry, my brother and I will deal with this!"

Michael looked down in doubt, then he turned his head to Cary in realization.

"How?!" Battery screamed.
"Umm... You'll see later!!" Cary hurried to snap his finger, but he can't.
"Umm..." he looked at the FD shrilling and clapped his hands instead.

The Failed Debuters? Gone to another realm of all gray with two screens. The blue room fell silent as the scream echoed, leaving only the twins inside.

Michael commanded, "Okay, let's do this!"
He moved the stuff away from the door and opened it with transform feature; and with his brother, they both rushed downstairs.

 

Chapter Text

Cary and Michael took the stairs, and ran outside the hotel to encounter that great, Giant Marker, that is kind of close to the building. It was towering, taller than the hotel here. Its silhouette contrasted the bright, blue sky. Its shadow covered them in a way that is sort of frightening, but they knew they had to do it. They both stared at it, determined…?

Cary commented, “That is… bigger than I thought…”

“Oh, yeah! It’s called the Giant Marker for a reason,” Michael replied.

The Giant Marker released an ear-bleeding and evil laugh at them. It thought the twins could not defeat it. However, they both ran towards it and arranged themselves, making it between them. 

It almost jumped to crush Cary, but he gripped his lasso belt, and stripped it tight so it could not go anywhere. Angry, it tried to free itself, but he tossed it away and put his belt back onto his waist. It flung, circling the world; and when it almost landed back to the Grasslands, Michael zapped it with a light blue ray. It dropped straight to the ground, releasing a dust explosion from the impact. The explosion barely hit the twins. The Marker was still intact, laying there, but it now got paralyzed… for now.

Michael whisper-shouted in joy, “We got it!”

However, this was just the beginning. Cary felt like they both had not finished yet and worried, “Umm… I feel like it isn’t dead yet… It could wake up one day and attack us again!”

A light bulb appeared on his head and lighted on. He told him about his plan, “So, how about we both split up?” “How?”

He explained, “So, I defend this place from any danger, and you check on other areas! You know, we both have the ability to draw directly and you can use whatever you have drawn? Maybe, draw a hang glider!” He touched his paintbrush and reminded him about their ability to draw.

Michael questioned him, “Oh. Uhh…  Are you sure you can handle the danger of the Markers?” He paused for a second, and replied, “Yeah, I can do that!”

He hesitated, but then gave him a thumbs up and said, “Ehh… Okay then. See you!” He waved his hands, “Bye!”

Cary watched his brother running into the hotel again, and this time, he went up to the hotel roof and drew a hang glider and flew with it away from the building, and the Grasslands as well. He smiled watching him go.

Behind the building, Pillow Marker and a yellow-orange-capped Marker with googly eyes that looked similar to a typical algebralien had been whispering this whole time. They both spied Cary, who was unaware of them. However, he spotted them as soon as he looked at the hotel. They both hid back from his sight. Well, it was the perfect time for them to strike him down.

“Huh?? I– I swear they both were–” A four-fingered long cartoony orange arm dragged him from his left leg.

“AAAAAAHH!!” He screamed in pain. He grasped, turned around and saw the yellow-orange Marker with their arm showing. His eyes widened. He forced himself to let go and zapped them with his pale-blue beam. The arm lost its grip and retracted to the Marker as they tripped down. He fled away from them. He stared at them, thinking they could be faking it. 

Little did he know, Pillow Marker was watching him. She hit him with a fluffy, yet hard smack; throwing him near the wall, hard on his palms, knees, and feet on the ceramic ground, drifting. He looked up to her, and ran towards her.

Two white lasers almost came through him; but he put his hands on his head and crouched away from the light.

He trembled along with the quick movements those beings made. Lasers. Noodle arms. Aggressive fluffiness with intention of murder. All he just witnessed after beating that giant one up.

He looked down and touched his belt. A faint white light bounced on his arms and the grassy ground. He felt like that stupid algebralien Marker was about to kill him. He got his paintbrush and drew a thick, black shield, and covered him with it the last second before they released their eye laser. The shield reflected the laser, and it struck them. Their body started melting like ice cream.

The smell of burnt plastic and ink enraged the Pillow Marker. She kicked Cary’s ass with the bottom of her body. She watched her partner burnt into pieces, and realized it was too late. 

She tried hitting him, but the hard shield blocked her move. Cary swapped his paintbrush for his eraser. He leaped and stabbed his own shield and Pillow Marker, deep into her body, but not passed through. Opaque purple-ish white ink squirted out of her body a bit and left a hollow scar. Despite aching, she had planned something much worse on him.

Something heavy that defied gravity approached near her, with that transformation outline?! She got up and turned her attention to Cary, who controlled the transformation by gestures. Curious, she rotated her body slightly to the right.

The outline disappeared and the gravity worked again, and that something heavy… call it the Recovery Center, got thrown and crushed her to death before she moved. The dust from the impact floated and dropped.

Cary stood up, and stared at the Giant Marker, who was still laying down there. “Ooh…”  He looked at his hands. Since he could zap anyone with his hands, who knows if the zap could kill that humongous thing?

He ran into it and blasted his ray against it.

The ground scratched… It got up! It did the opposite! He stepped back and turned his attention away from it to and fro. He heard a brief, distant voice of his brother; however, he was too nervous to focus on that!

Giant Marker made a loud step, taunting him. Cary stepped back once more. Sure, he should get the hang of it eventually.

A TV snow blinked in once again. That Evil Shadow Marker teleported in between them, despite being beaten by his brother. Seems like it would not give up. Cary widened his eyes in fear. “Aaah!!”

He looked down and picked his paintbrush, and removed his belt from his waist. He drew a black shield again with the brush for protection, and put it back on the belt. The Evil Shadow Marker tried to expand itself, but Cary’s shield got close and touched it, shrinking it back to the same size. His shield clinked. He tried to catch that Marker, but it teleported away.

It tried to expand again… He prevented it from doing so… over, and over… They both got stuck in a loop to the point Giant Marker hated it! It wanted to stop all of this, and settle a final win for its remaining army. Were they still surviving anyway? Whatever!

It vomited Dark Markery, hoping he could settle all of this fight. However, he just stood there, confused. He focused on buzzes from that one black void Marker, expanding and shrinking back and forth, while that yellow stick man (Cary) fought back for his creation with his brother. Clink… Clink…

He looked around, and spotted his arch-nemesis, Purple Marker… who was destroyed into two pieces. Terrific! He does not know who did that, but still; his main goal was accomplished!

He turned around and looked up to the Giant Marker, grunted and whispered to himself, “What’s the point of me being here?”

He did not want to deal with this! He just wanted to get back to his place and take his domination! Looking at the flashy fight and the giant back and forth, his aggression softened. He knew the Giant Marker would force him to kill everyone that is not his kind. He had not seen that stick man before, and somehow… he felt bad.

He sighed, and snuck onto the scene as the smell of burnt plastic, smoke, and ink welcomed him.

He pulled his chainsaw on, buzzing, and swung it to the back. He looked for the perfect moment where that all-black Marker teleported in front of him. He trembled, knowing this was not going to work…

As he knew it, the Shadow Marker showed up in front of him. He took a deep breath and swung his chainsaw into it.

“ACK!” The lasso belt slapped him, making him trip left to the grass. Hurtful! Buzz… His vision flashed black. It… disappeared, before his eyes…

He watched the two clashing with each other, unnoticed of his presence. He got up and walked slowly, near that sweaty tall stick man… He gripped Cary’s right wrist with his nonexistent hand. Cary sensed his ghostly touch.

“Huh??”

Dark Markery dragged him out of the battle! Cary felt the grass stabbing his back to the point it hurted. He shrieked, “HAAH!! WHAT!??? WHO IS THIS??!”

He squinted his eyes. He whimpered and shed a tear. He threw his shield towards Dark Markery. However, he tilted his body forwards, and jumped over it. Cary’s body followed it and lifted with force.

They both dashed, jumped, and broke into the underground factory! Dark Markery smashed the wide, thick, and shiny metal plate that blocked the entrance, all with the force of his dark purple bottom!

BONG! It cracked and broke into smaller ones! Cary whipped his belt, hitting almost all the pieces of the slab out of their way, and him. 

They both fell downstairs, hitting the edges of the steps from the eight flights and the walls; and got thrown out of them, all the way into the large goop that used to be Golf Ball’s Dream Island. It was kind of dense, and was not sticky at all; and it smelt like old paper. The factory itself was dim, with the lava from two Oven-o-Trons and an incubator. The fans and the gears spun from the walls. Some chatters from the crowd echoed. Cary’s back and his legs bruised. He breathed hard.

He got up, scanned the room, and spotted the remaining contestants — including Basketball, Coiny, and Pen, as well as the original Marker — as survivors, trying to find solutions by inventing a new gun to cure the infection for object-kinds. Basketball was working on it with her welding tools, and most of the contestants were helping her.

Coiny turned behind, spotted both Cary and Dark Markery from afar, and gasped. He pointed his shaky finger at them, and announced to the rest of the contestants, while panicking, “Two of them had just broken into our base! They’re gonna infect us now! We’re DOOMED!!”

Basketball put her tool back onto the floor, widened her eyes, and stared at them in disbelief. “WHAT?!” Marker inhaled, and hid behind Basketball out of fear, “No, no, no no no nononono!!!! Nooo!! I’m scared!” Dark Markery saw that! He spotted Marker! “I… Forget it!”

The rest of the contestants turn all their eyes on them. They all gasped.

Cary turned his eyes to Dark Markery, and whimpered in fury, “What… are you… doing…?!” Dark Markery got up and rotated to face him and made eye contact with each other.

Coiny realized one of them was not shaped like those typical Markers and looked like Flower without her petals. “Wait a minute. One of them doesn’t look like it! They looked familiar, even! Is that Flower… except without petals?!” The contestants once again gasped.

Pen shuttered, “Um… I barely remember her! I mean, what if they’re both… harmless?” Coiny replied, “That purple one is holding a chainsaw though! They cannot be harmless!”

Eggy came up, and asked, “If they’re as harmful as them, then can’t you just shoo them off?” “What? No! That’s just gonna make this worse!”

Snowball walked up after a conversation with Bell, and said, “Well, I can just beat those wimps up!” Basketball begged him not to, “Snowball, no! You’re gonna also get infected!”

Bell encouraged him, “Yeah! Get them!” Basketball yelled at her, and they both argued. That snowy ball walked near the dark goop and cracked his knuckles, preparing to fight against both Cary and Dark Markery. However, they both were not interested in him. Instead, Cary stared at him and clapped his hands. The chatters went silent, gone.

Now that all the surviving contestants vanished, Dark Markery stepped out of the goop. It left a trace of black. He told Cary to walk out as well and find a hiding spot. “carykh_BFDI, get outta here and hide from it. Wherever!”

“Umm…” Cary walked out of the goop. He held his own right wrist with his left hand, shaking from the painful force of Dark Markery’s invisible hand.

They both walked behind the Oven-o-Tron 2000 and Cary sat there. He bent his legs and wrapped his arms around them. The oven and the surroundings were warm. It helped him recover a little bit.

Cary looked at the goop, and realized his belt sinked. He let his right arm out, and opened his left hands, shaking less. The belt moved like a snake, making a swishy sound; and touched his hand. The belt left unharmed.

Aloof, Dark Markery asked with a deep voice, “Can I tell you something?” Cary turned his head to him, replied with a tired and soft voice, “Umm… what?” He has never seen this kind of Marker speak before. 

“I’m very glad that fool was killed! You seen that purple one?” 

Cary looked down and paused for a second. He recalled that moment when he and his brother looked around before their first encounter of that void Marker. Suddenly, he realized. “Oh… Yeah..! What’s up with it?” His voice got loud a bit, though still aching.

He ranted, “He made a fool of me a looong time ago, and I’ve always wanted to replace him! Now that he’s dead, could you do me a favor?”

“Umm… What is your name? And… as long as that’s what I can.”

“Call me Dark Markery, and send me back to my place now!”

Sending him back? He relaxed his legs and looked at his hands. That is something he can not do… He is not in the Find The Markers development team! He refused, “No! I can’t do that, Markery!”

Dark Markery frowned in disapproval. He swung his chainsaw close to his face. He yelled, “Just throw me out of that space! Go to the Dimension of Darkness there, you idiot!”

Cary smacked the floor with both his hands. His voice got louder, surprised, “I don’t know where that is! Is that a new update for Find the Markers?! Also, we’re in the BFDI world, so… again, I can’t do that…!”

His chainsaw got close to his face. Dark Markery raised his voice and mocked his words, “Na, na, na na! I! Don’t! Care! Send me back there, or else!”

Cary took a deep breath, and gripped his lasso belt with his left hand. He started trembling again… The heat made him uncomfortable.

He stood up in annoyance and whipped Dark Markery with his belt. He backed down. Cary exclaimed, “I just don’t know where that is! Ask that giant one, it’s over there!” He pointed his finger to the ceiling, assuming the Giant Marker was there. “Why should I?!”

“Oh! One last thing; you… broke my wrist!” He whipped him again for good measure. Dark Markery tripped to the cold floor.

“DARK MARKERY. YOU. ARE. SUPPOSED. TO. KILL. HIM.”

The voice of the Giant Marker echoed throughout the factory!

“Grrrr!!!” Cary jerked out of anger and ran away from him, looking for that stairway that led them out while preparing for the instinct. Dark Markery got up and chased him, with his buzzing chainsaw out.

They both rushed onto the thirteen-flight stairway, and everything they looked at started to look deteriorated. Dark Markery swung his chainsaw to Cary. However, he shifted his position left and right against the chainsaw directions, and jumped over it. Not very effective.

Cary glanced at his belt and held it with his right hand. He blasted his ray through his left hand, targeting that dark Marker thing. He jumped over it, though it hit his bottom. “OWWWW!! OW! OW! Waaa!” He stopped and pretended to get hurt.

Cary halted as well and realized they were on nine and half flights from below. He started getting lightheaded from the result of spinning in almost circular motion. He panted. He bent his knee down a bit, looked down and touched his own mouth with his left hand, like he was about to vomit. He murmured, “Oh gosh… go… ask… that giant… one up there… and…! stop this… Honestly…” He coughed.

Dark Markery changed his expression to a mocking smile, He shouted at him,  “BUT do you think I’m losing here?! Nah!” He levitated, revealing a purple flame above his cap.

Cary got his head up quick. He gasped.

He got charged up and zapped him. It did nothing to him! No way! He tiptoed around Dark Markery’s tubular body. The chainsaw floated away. His skin felt like he’s turning orange. He looked at his hands, and gasped, “Wha… WAIT…!!”

He stepped up further and a chainsaw dropped next to him. He startled and gazed at Dark Markery, afraid. He looked up to the bright sky, and ran upstairs as more chainsaws appeared and almost dropped above his head. He dodged every single Dark Markery’s moves and was almost there at 12th flight, with the sunshine welcoming him… until he stubbed his right toe. He tripped down, hitting his left arm, his head, you call it. Dark Markery kicked him out on the 5th flight. 

The TV snow and the black vision blinked several times in his eyes. His eyes turned to the factory floor, and he spotted that Evil Shadow Marker he had fought earlier?! He widened his eyes. slackjawed in fear. He spread his body to land!

It expanded towards him and…

He saw himself as one of those Markers. The tubular body replaced his stick man body. His white base, his yellow cap, his emblem which has green for the outside ring and blue circle inside, and his red-orange bottom somewhat reminded him of Rubik’s cube. He looked at Dark Markery. He was filled with determination… to infect everyone else. He was ready.

But, how about the real Cary? Where did he go?

Cary opened his eyes to a red-ish, space-like void. It was starry… and cold. It was so cold it numbed his pain, for now. He floated through the void at a constant speed. His vision was filled with TV snows blinking.

He spotted that void Marker again. Upon blinking, it disappeared. What the heck is this? He turned around. He lifted his left hand, for anytime it appeared in front of his eyes. The surveillance made him obnoxious, but he kept holding on, waiting for its sight.

The problem was, it flashed around the void. He could not catch it on time, even with his lasso belt. He swung his belt. He then spinned and missed it. Every. Single. Time. He sometimes hit his own back with his belt.

He moved zig-zag across, trying to catch it with a whip and a zap in desperation, until he saw an odd shaped yellow-orange creature with darker limbs from behind, standing there motionless for God knows-how-long. He gasped and wore his belt back onto his waist. He could already tell what they were, by the shape. That was a lost algebralien also trapped here! 

He tapped on their left arm and called their name, “Hello, Forty-Three…”

They turned around and startled, thinking they spotted that same Marker, when it was just a yellow stick man, talking to them. They yelped, “Haah! Oh. Uhh…” Cary looked at them horrified, and apologized, “No! I’m… sorry! I didn’t mean it like that..!” He sighed.

Forty-Three shivered and pointed their finger to the speedy Evil Shadow Marker, “It’s fine… I- I thought I saw that one again! You know, that thing??”

Cary paused to look to the left, and made eye contact back with them. He said, “Oh… eh.. yeah…!” “Yeah. We… lost to that crap.” Seems like they both were in the same fate.

“Also… hi… Who are you? I’m really… curious, dude.”

He replied, “Hmmm… Since we have a similar color for my head, and your body, why not ‘Yellow?’” They thought about that name… “Got it, Yellow…” They smiled a bit. It was for his protection.

It was the first time Cary encountered an algebralien like this. Mind you he never saw any algebraliens anywhere during his time in the BFDI world with his brother! Maybe he saw that one Marker similar to them earlier, but did it really count as one? He had been wondering about that! He told them about it, “Speaking of the color yellow, I saw that one Marker, whose cap and stuff shared the same color scheme as you.”

Forty-Three rolled their eyes and made a sarcastic remark, “Cool. That’s… really cool of them!” They scoffed. Cary sighed, “Well, I already killed them, along with that pillow one. I think she… was supposed to represent Pillow.” A part of Forty-Three remembered her as one of the TPOT contestants. “Oh, yeah! Pillow! She’s one of Two’s contestants infected, along with…” 

They realized something was wrong! “Wait a minute… Didn’t I already kill her?!” They gripped their own palms in annoyance. Cary held his right arm with his left hand. He assured them, “Umm… Don’t worry about it. Let’s just hope her death will be permanent this time…” “Whatever!”

“Oh! Since you mentioned Two, do you know where they went? And… Four and X?” They told him, “They’re all fused into me, along with Six, Seven, Eight, and Nine.” They counted with their fingers.

Cary was quite surprised by their statement. That made him wonder, “Ohh! Then, where are Five, Ten, and the rest of them?” Forty-Three hesitated, “Umm… I don’t know!” They put their hand down.

They recalled their memories of the algebraliens in them, deep into their mind…

They thought of Six’s memory, and explained, “So… Six asked Five in particular to join with Two, just as he asked the rest of his friends, but they refused. All… outta his friends, who all volunteered, they were the only one not helping them... They told Six that they didn’t believe Two, when he was on a call with them. So, we wrote a letter to Four and X, Nine was a prick though, and went out to Goiky without them! We don’t know what happened to the rest of our kind… Ten wasn’t there, the Zeroes were too busy talking to each other on the other side… Umm… They all could be dead… by now! We’ll never find out!”

Maybe Cary can create a portal for them… He forced himself to smile to cope and suggested, “Oh… How about we create a portal to get back to the world, and… see what they’re up to? Hehe…”

They saw it as bullcrap already. They objected, “Wha– No…! Last time I tried creating it, the stupid Marker ate it!”

Their mind flashed back to their attempt to create their portal themselves, before Cary arrived. At first, they snapped their finger to teleport themselves. It obviously did not work, as they teleported to nowhere in the void. Then, they swept their hand from bottom to up, creating a portal to the Grasslands with the glimmering power. They tried to pass through the portal. However, the Evil Shadow Marker got in front of it, and the portal glitched out to nothing, as if it had never existed. Forty-Three twitched out of fear.

Back to the present, Cary told them, “Well, I’m one of the two creators of this world, so… umm…” His cheeks turned red, and his face sank. He is actually one of the creators of BFDI, isn't he?

They looked at his waist, and then his face. They prompted, “Seriously…? And… who’s the other one?” He raised his face back. “Uhh… No…  Actually, we’re not the creators… My brother and I… came to save this world…! Umm… Yeah!” He lied. There was a greater cause to this.

“Your brother…Whoa… What does he look like?” Cary replied, “Let’s just say he looks like me… but slightly different…” “Oh… I’m… looking forward to seeing him, if that’s even possible…” Forty-Three wished and sighed.

They glared at the infinite space of this starry void, as they and Cary floated around. They turned to him and asked, “Anyway, how’s him?”

“Umm… He’s… on his way to check on the other places in this world, and maybe, kill all those Markers there… We had a plan to split up, because like, we both tried to kill that giant one, and… I wanted to defend the Grasslands from those Markers… and, I failed. You know what I mean?”

“I see. Hmm… Is the Giant still alive…?” Forty-Three shivered again.

He deadpanned, “Unfortunately… yeah.”

Woe and coldness filled the air. Well, Cary is here to break that… or that was what he thought. He held their hand, and picked his paintbrush up from his belt with his left hand.

Forty-Three exclaimed, “...W– What? Are you making a portal?!”

He drew an oval, then painted it with the landscape of the Grasslands and switched colors with his paintbrush, while he told them, “Hmm… I’m just testing it. Don’t wor–”

TV snow blinked into their visions.

The Evil Shadow Marker jumpscared him. He collided with the yellow-orange algebralien, scared. “Woah!!” He looked back, and the portal disappeared, glitched out of existence, by that void-keeper. They flickered their hand off Cary’s and yelled, “Did you not hear what I said to you…?!”

That plan failed. Cary put his paintbrush back to the belt. “Umm… Sorry… Let me just…” Instead, he clapped his hands, with his swelling right wrist.

Nothing happened. He did not get anywhere. Forty-Three stared at him, hopeless.

He held his right hand above his chest. He murmured, “No… I… should have treated my wrist first… Ow…” The algebralien gave him a concerned look. They interrogated, “Uhh… Did you break it? Like… by accident or something?” He answered, “No… but another Marker did.”

‘Another Marker.’ Those words went right into their mind. They tremored and gulped in disappointment, “THERE’S… MORE?!”

“...Yeah. Um… I think his name was… Dark Markery…”

They yelled, “WHERE IS–” Wait. They breathed out in despair, knowing they could never find him. “...Nevermind. It’s not like we could escape here now anyway…”

It was getting colder, and colder in this very dimension; and they both needed heat at this point. So, Cary spread his arms and got close to Forty-Three. He wrapped his arms around their body, like he was hugging a large plushie. It felt comforting, despite it not being real for a creator. His wrist still ached, but it did not matter now.

The number alien sensed the heat from the human body, disguised as the stick figure. They hugged him back after a wave of heat hit them. For them, it felt real. They had been ‘alone’ for… maybe 10 minutes. But ever since another came here, this place had been ‘lively’ and to say, they were glad they were not alone.

Chapter Text

The one twin brother with a funny-looking head talked to his brother for the last time, “Ehh… Okay then. See you!” with his thumbs up on. Cary waved to him in response cheerfully, “Bye!”

Michael headed back to the empty hotel. This time, he spun around the elevator on the stairways, from the red-pink, orange, yellow, green, all the way into the highest floor after that blue floor. He was met with a dark, muted purple door in front of him. Seems like he was in what used to be the bathroom.

He swung the door open. The bright blue sky shined out. He went onto the roof, where Two used to host Cake at Stake here before the invasion. The west and north in his perspective still had fences at the edge of the roof. The east did not. So, he ran that way to the edge.

The view was astonishing. Maybe because it was his first time he actually visited this fictional place. The green bushes scattered across the yellow grass, from what he could see. There was a large stone timer that said 00:00, far from where he was. So, what’s beyond that? Let’s find out.

He picked his paintbrush and paint bucket up from his lasso belt. He replicated a hang glider with the white sail resembling a simple paper plane. He has a stylistic skill at drawing, so it was no problem at all. This has to work.

He held it before it fell down by the sail. He brought it up to the roof. It was not too heavy for him. Good thing the fabric didn’t rip off. He was relieved… and excited because it’s time for him to fly around the Goiky!

He squatted and brought the tip of the fabric up to his head. He slid sideways, and straightened his arms towards the bar. His hands gripped it. His right feet stopped the body.

He stood up along with the glider that he lifted slightly above his head. He moved back from the edge of the roof. He took a deep breath with his eyes closed. He held it for a second before he exhaled. He opened his eyes and took a step back.

He dashed and jumped out of the hotel roof.

He lay down in the air and positioned the bar down his chest. This wasn’t really a typical hang glider! He could control it however he pleased! Sweet! He turned to the east just a bit with his hang glider. He adjusted his altitudes higher than the hotel.

He went past the large timer. He also spotted a construction of a light gray platform that appeared to be a third way done. He moved ahead as the surrounding shifted to a desert with one building. Nothing much was going on there, he supposed.

A little more right. The sky turned pink and he already could detect the smell of ink. The extreme mount of lands, pillars, and temple ruins showed up in his vision with some small moving dots in one of the temples; and most importantly, the four infected contestant Markers roamed around the aloe vera farm.

Golf Ball, Black Hole, Teardrop, and Tennis Ball they resembled. Michael felt like they were going to infect him too. He got out of the biome with a flash.

Phew. They did not notice his presence, he thought. The sky reverted to blue. He peeked down, and he already flew over a forest full of vibrant green trees. Of course, there was no sign of those Markers. No one lived here for destruction.

The sky color shifted from blue to yellow. The forest stopped there as he was passing through the Yoyle Mountain. He went over the tip and returned to the original altitude. Beyond the mountain, a city with the Yoyle Tower sat in the purple grass that is Yoyleland, the biome where yoyleberry bushes grow. How nostalgic. No marker ink smell though. Again, no one really lived here anymore! He assumed.

He continued flying. He left the purple land, and he flew above the sea level. Literally. He turned around to go to the other side of North Goiky. He turned his eyes at a pink island, with a very absurd, yet tall structure. There was nothing off from it. He just wanted to make sure.

He saw the Eiffel Tower. That meant he headed towards the classic ol’ Plains at South Goiky! He sniffed. He smelled a familiar scent… His head turned to the bottom out of curiosity.

A crowd of infected BFDI Mini contestants?! He halted out of the plains and startled! He could not remember all of them. He inspected a bit higher. He spotted four more Markery victims outside the crowd!

Puffball, Cloudy, Grassy, and Eraser. They all acted like the leaders of those crowds. Michael shouldn‘t let them all see him!

He focused his gaze to the sky. Maybe he could go into outer space to find the algebraliens’ home?

He launched himself out of the planet earth, and the surroundings turned dark. The environment was now surrounded with blinking stars. His hang glider remained in good shape. He was dazed about the fact he could still breathe. Except, it wasn't because of budget cuts, as said by a speaker box back then. After all, he is one of the creators here. 

Anyway, he found a bright planet, with numbers and math symbols, and a ring around it. That must be where algebraic aliens like Four lived!

He dashed into the planet.

He landed on the Equation Playground somehow. The sky is like the earth in the afternoon. The tree looked longer. Whispery voices of survivors detected. The scent of ink hit his nose. He detected four last victims of the Marker infection! Those are Pin, Rocky, Fries and Ice Cube!

They all stared at him, like they were about to infect him… Actually, they were going to.

He jerked in fear and gasped. He got out of this planet as soon as he could. A white trail blocked the Markers’ vision for two seconds. By the time it faded, that stick man already disappeared.

Michael looked around the outer space. He levitated between the planet earth, and that one planet he just visited. He felt like that was all of the victims of the Marker invasion, and he should kill them all to prevent further harm to this universe, and for Noob…?

He used his paintbrush and drew a blue megaphone. He placed his paintbrush back onto the lasso belt, and held the megaphone close to his mouth with his right hand. He announced, “Attention all of the survivors! You all will be teleported to a safer place very soon! As you may know, some ‘unknown’ creatures whom we call the ‘Markers’, not to be confused with that Marker the contestant,  have been invading this universe by infecting anyone on their ways, and they can potentially destroy this universe! To combat this, we, the Stickies, are going to save you from this apocalypse! We are aiming to eliminate all of the ‘Marker’-ers! So, once again, you will be teleported to a safer place after this announcement.”

His voice echoed so far it reached the ears of the survivors, such as those on earth, including his brother at the Grasslands, though he might not hear it very well; and that one planet.

Still holding the megaphone, Michael counted down, “Alright, I’m gonna be counting now… In three… two… one…” He released his megaphone and…

Click! He snapped his finger with his right hand. The ocean-rocky planet and the algebralien planet might be quiet now! He erased his megaphone with his eraser tool, gripped his hang glider back and dashed back to the earth.

First up: The Plains.

He landed into the Plains he had visited earlier. The grass tickled his legs. He gazed to the front… He noticed the BFDI Mini victims of the invasion trying to merge into another Giant Marker! At that moment, they formed some weird orange amalgam of those cylinder things, expanding more…

He stepped back and left his hang glider, and ran towards them all whilst pulling his hands forwards.

His palms lighted up blue. They smoked a bit, but it’s okay. The crowd tried running away from him, including the amalgam. They did not scream, they just frowned. The hot light blue beam stripped out of Michael’s hands and lit the crowd to fade to death. The light smoke spread out inside the plains for half a second, and invoked a bitter taste.

The leaders ran off out of the crowd, except for Cloudy Marker, who tripped and fell down from his lack of caution whilst running along. Though, he managed to get up while he was still burning dim. He watched the rest of his gang attacking a random yellow-headed stick man…

Puffball Marker bounced up from the ground, targeting Michael. He could already feel it, and moved away from her target area. The pink fluff Marker missed and thummed the ground instead. She frowned, and went into a confused state. How did he know that? Shadow?

Out of a sudden, Michael knocked Puffball Marker out stunned out of his way. He looked at Grassy Marker standing next to him. He seemed upset.

The one with his lasso belt chose his paintbrush. He drew a wireless flamethrower, and pointed it at him; since that Marker is a grass, right?

Michael chased straight towards him as he pulled the trigger. A large blue flame burst out of the nozzle, reaching the cylinder green grass thing and setting him on fire. Despite the immense heat, the yellowhead managed to stab him with the same weapon. He twirled and aimed the burning fireball at the now-confused Cloudy Marker.

At this time, the flame on his body had disappeared. The fluffy white Marker saw that as an opportunity to fight back against the stick man… or so he thought. He levitated and flew just above that yellowhead. He sprung up.

Michael turned his gaze above and realized the fluffy white one was above him. He ran back from his aim. 

He hurled the flaming blue fireball with his flamethrower and Grassy Marker off Cloudy Marker. At the same time, the fluffy white dived down at him, knocking the stickman to fall off. Their moves clashed!

They all suffered from what happened to that grass model, intense burning, though the humanoid one stood up as fast as he could while his holding legs had brief pain oversensitivity.

To settle this off, Michael zapped a light blue beam to both of them and his flamethrower, with his hand, wiping all out with no trace. Michael faded out to camouflage.

Far from Michael’s sight, Puffball Marker lay down in pain.  Eraser Marker came to her and helped her back up. She managed to stand up and followed Eraser Marker’s path towards the Eiffel Tower. While walking, she suspected steps of grass coming at her…

SPLAT!

She felt a pierce up her face and her rainbow ink jetted out of her body as she blacked out, laying there lifeless. The fluff corpse had a narrow hole across her face.

It freaked Eraser Marker out and rushed to the top of the Tower. He inspected the view of the Plain from the north to the south, and he didn’t see anything at first. Weird.

While distracted, Michael with his smirky face faded back in with a drawn ‘bloody’ knife punctured through Puffball Marker’s dead body from afar. How cruel! He drew that rubbery model’s attention and he knew what to do!

Eraser Marker bent the Eiffel Tower against the stick man’s direction and held still. The iron creaked as if it was on the verge of snapping.

Michael gasped and positioned himself as if he was about to punch him in the face, fiercely. Eraser Marker from above launched himself over Michael’s head and the tower wiggled. Seems like EM shot himself way too far and ended up injuring himself from the fall damage to the ground.

Michael and him clashed with each other… However, the yellow skimmed down and smeared that pink model to just a pink paste that didn’t do anything at this point. The taste of victory sometimes could be as tasty as an easy-kneading eraser.

Michael snapped his finger… and the dead body got erased from existence, like it never happened. He looked for his hang glider somewhere. He picked it up and ran up to the enormous Eiffel Tower. He somehow climbed it up only with his feet walking. He stepped back and fled to the north-west.

Next destination: Pillary Ruins.

The sky transitioned to pink as he went by and he landed on one of the furthest green mountains inside. He caught the four other Markers sprinting and jumping their ways out of the mount stacks.

One of them, Teardrop Marker, held her laser gun with a smiley face. From her back, she detected Michael’s arrival behind. She turned around and aimed her gun at him, ready to annihilate him. The three ones turned around like it was his public execution for him.

Michael realized that stupid 3D cylinder water model was about to kill him in one shot. The circle nozzle of that gun shined as it warmed up.

A line of neon red light accelerated through the air out of the nozzle! He wobbled to the left while holding his glider bar, avoiding it.

Two more came out and a lot more flew in a way that was really referential to Michael and his brother’s oldest BFDI season! The obstacles left some paths for him to go through for a reason. They all filled the sky!

He made some panicking noises while running and spinning to and fro with a pattern of bright lines being shot away throughout his spot.

A ‘tunnel’ of the last shots of laser came out before Teardrop Marker ran out of her gun energy, fortunately. Michael passed through the tunnel, and panted out of an overwhelming amount of red lasers.

He stared at her soulless face as his corner of his mouth smiled and his eyebrows drew inward. He looked up almost into the sky and raised his hands up with his palms to the sun. 

Something… was boiling up here… The sun radiation got brighter and that stick man as well dropped some drops of sweat from his face. The sweats then evaporated before they even touched the grass.

Teardrop Marker on the other hand, shivered from bubbling down. The water of her vaporized as she shrunk down to being shorter, and shorter. She turned around and gestured to attack the stick man torturing her at the three ruins travellers, and she vaporized completely. No wet surface, only her laser gun left.

Golf Ball Marker and Tennis Ball Marker teamed up and constructed a tool out of thin air.

Michael decreased the temperature with the sky darkened, and he already felt cold overall, covered with sweat. With his blurry eyes, he spotted a white ball and a brighter green cylinder making stuff up on top of one of the mounts. Were they gonna turn him into one of them…?

As his vision got clearer, he gripped the bar again and flew towards them to watch closely…

His hang glider felt kind of heavy like the gravity here increased… It was getting harder to breathe here. But why? Michael moved from his place and turned over.

Black Hole Marker? The purple disk surrounded his body.

He pulled him in closer and closer to singularity…

Michael blasted him with his blue ray. But he sucked it up! He wouldn’t budge!

He stormed away from that void-black cylinder with that disk while he tried to pull harder.

Michael turned back and removed his lasso belt from his waist. He posed himself by putting his right gripping hand to the back, ready to lock him…

A large green light passed in between their stares. Michael jerked off his focus and he looked down. He gazed at the Golf Ball model with a cat smile, and the lime green cylinder supposedly representing Tennis Ball… Wait…

That’s an advanced and bigger version of Teardrop’s laser gun with a pointy purple nozzle and white shell carved with Purple Marker! Is that the Markernator-1338?! How could one develop a tool in just a second? He couldn’t comprehend this.

Michael realized he was awfully close to that black hole thing. He went up above him and swung his right hand behind as another green shot lit up to where he was previously at, whilst trying not to get sucked up by him. This move had to be precise.

His legs became heavier by force as he struggled to lift himself over. His right arm ached holding that belt… BH Marker seemed to emit a green light. Interesting…

It’s time.

Michael lashed BHM’s body with his lasso belt and it circled around him! That was what he looked for! He dragged him while that black cylinder made an attempt to set himself free from the belt.

He watched the green light blasting straight to the sky where they both were and it shut off. Breathing became a lot more uncomfy up here… The belt got stiff and all… He sighed.

That yellow stick man swayed his belt, aiming for those menaces, with another menace who had a capability to kill anyone with a vacuum. It’s silly, but whatever he could do…

The green light struck once more! He thrashed his right arm down with his lasso belt, dropping BHM to the ground and crashed into GBM and TBM’s territory. That void cylinder sucked both of them and their gun into singularity! He vibrated and explored in an attempt to find his Markermates. Too bad, they are gone now!

Michael almost touched that light, but he missed and fell! He grabbed his hang glider bar while in the air. His belt dropped, but he grabbed it with his foot and bounced it to his shoulder. Now that he was below that menace, he grabbed his belt and looked for his paint bucket. He picked his paint bucket and set the color to pure white.

He bit his bucket with his goofy mouth and wore his belt back onto his waist. Tedious while holding the bar with his left hand, but it worked. He held his bucket with his right hand, letting his mouth off it. He looked down at the black thing moving below.

He dashed down to him while flipping that bucket down. The paint spilled out at the perfect time…

Black Hole Marker jumped from one mount to another. He climbed down, looking for his friends’ sight. There’s just none, except those pillars sticking in. He jumped to another again. Still nothing, but rocks and pillars. He got frustrated and turned over. All he saw was thin air.

… Where did that yellowhead go?

Pure white paint splashed that black void model, brighter than the sun, covering his vision. That paint boiled him down, because white contrasted with black!

“Whoops!” Michael watched that thing shrinking in pain, and eventually reduced to a large puddle of white paint on the ground, with his gray bucket in the middle. No more suckers!

He landed into the mount where BHM was. His feet made a splash on the ground. He picked it up and locked it back to his lasso belt. He chose his eraser and wiped the paint mess off the ground. He let off his glider and lifted his feet to wipe the paint off. He placed it back onto his belt.

He looked at the pink-tinted sky…

He got his white hang glider and gripped the bar. He squatted and hopped off the ground, flying over to the other planet. He left some white smoke spreading for two seconds and faded out.

The last one: The Equation Playground.

Michael let out his hang glider and landed in the primary subscriber-milestone special area, where the algebraliens lived happily in their other universe. This universe however, lacked any now; there were only four infected contestants that resembled a rock, a pack of french fries, a red pushpin, and of course, a tubular frozen water.  The tree near the three seesaws had been broken, split by them. There was a letter by his side for Four and X with Six, Seven, and Eight’s signatures.

The four horsemen, far from where he was in four directions, sensed the stump of a stick man’s landing.

Ice Cube Marker from the east approached him in a flash, about to thrash him.

Michael turned to the right halfway, and spotted that frozen thing running towards him! Before she even swung herself… he propelled her away to the sky with his foot! His foot cooled down.

He looked almost at the sun and raised his arms at it, and increased the temperature of this area, hoping she never came back. The stick man released drops of sweat as time went by.

As the sky brightened, he set the walking Fries Marker at the north on fire and burned on accident before he could even act! That’s good though. The smell of burning paper and boiling oils spread across the playground. The tree set on fire, with smoke fogged at the plains. The letter also set on fire, dissolving it to ashes. The grass wilted to brown.

He ran towards him and zapped with a light blue beam him to death, only the smell of oily food remained. Michael felt the need for drinking water built up with his throat getting dry. He raised his hands and dropped the temperature down, darkened the blue sky to normal and cooled the air. The tree was still burning yellow though, releasing ashes as a result of burning leaves there.

He observed the playground with his blurry eyes getting more clear.

“Bulleh!”

He heard a familiar vomiting noise from the west. He turned to the left, and discovered the warm green glossy-gross barf, almost touching his feet on the ground. It didn’t smell like anything he would have expected.

He took a step back. Rocky Marker was standing there with his soulless eyes staring. That barf could turn him into one of them! That amusement turned into a grim life-or-death situation.

Michael rushed to the right as this piece of rock chased him, vomiting that hazardous gross stuff several times in his run across the wide green. Smoke from the flaming tree made him weaker for his body.

He shifted his attention to that rock and forward back to and fro through the endless plains. His legs sapped from running, and they made him slower… He picked his lasso belt out of his waist… SLAP!

He whipped something pointy in the process of removing it? He halted and slipped on the grassy land, stunned. …what?

He got up and seemed like he encountered the Pin Marker! She lay down at first, but she rose up as soon as she knew who knocked her off.

Awkwardly, he turned his head at the rock, and a realistic-looking red pushpin with the same face. He searched for that tree which had been burning when he killed both the ice cylinder and french fries.

He jumped over the animate rock, rolling out of both of them and continued to run. Rocky Marker and Pin Marker went after him, spilling more green barf behind him as he ran away from them.

Pin Marker got in front of his vision, blocking his path to the tree. Michael turned left to divert the path. Pin showed up in front of him to lock him. She pointed her spike to that stick man. However, he kept going on and jumped over her and ran with little to no scratch.

Somewhere, Michael stopped to hold his knees down and hyperventilated out of exhaustion. He looked at them from behind, who were approaching him. He inhaled the smokey air and exhaled. He gazed at the burning tree as he sweated. He wanted to try hiding himself again.

He turned around at both of the different menace Markers getting closer at him, and put on his devious smile, with his hand forming the V shape.

“Look behind you!” he instructed. They halted and both turned their direction to the south. With the power of opacity, he faded away from their sight.

Nothing was behind them. Really? They both looked back at the stick man, only to find out there was nothing. Pin Marker and Rocky Marker stared at each other in confusion. They suspected he was planning to… well, they both knew what would happen if they didn’t kill him soon.

Rocky Marker barfed that green stuff to the ground to check. Nothing happened. Just a puddle of his own barf on the ground.

He and his pushpin buddy whispered about their plans while walking out of their spot.

Suddenly, they both glued together like a magnet with metals. They could not get off! They tried to separate, but they both wouldn't budge! Their expressions morphed into their sad faces.

Pin Marker spotted that broken burning tree levitating, with a thin black box outline surrounding it. They both tried to push them away from each other in desperation as that tree log moved towards them at rapid speed. The fireball then stopped in front of them. How warm.

The rock and the pushpin tried to push themselves harder, and the hardest. …but they still wouldn’t separate, at all.

Pin Marker looked at Rocky Marker and drew her eyebrow inwards. She dragged him to the left. She might have insulted him in a way that is inaudible for normal persons out there. Rocky pulled his eyebrows outwards, showing how upset he was.

They silently argued over whatever they had been going on, and that burning one in front of them; while dragging themselves in a random movement near it. The argument heated from their movement, and the ashes from the burnt tree leaves continued to snow.

The tree log drove back and up from both of them, pulling the ‘heat’ away… They kept arguing and arguing…

It banged and flamed them with all of the force, with one of them crushed to death. The fiery leaves rattled and fell out around and turned into ashes. Smoke from the log waved to the sky.

The log lifted up, and looks like Rocky Marker got shattered into 7 pieces of him from the brutal pressure from the log with controlled boxed bound. Pin Marker on other hand, only had the burning look for her red body, and she stuck into the log with her long, sharp spike. Her face morphed into angrier expression.

The yellow stick man’s opacity increased, standing there while making gestures for the log. He opened his jaw, impressed about the fact that the pushpin endured the crushing method. Of course she was probably strong enough to handle such heavy things.

Michael almost forgot he had to kill her! He shook his head and gave her a stern stare. He turned his right hand 180 degrees behind. The tree log with Pin Marker stuck flipped to his back, leaving that rock shards behind. The fire wheeled over him as if he entered inside a hot room and left after a second.

He flickered his hand, removing that black outline surrounding the box. He rolled his eyes to think about killing her by drilling. So, he used his paintbrush to draw a drill spike and colored it with light gray. He put the brush back into its place and equipped the spike with his right hand.

He turned around and ambled towards the pinhead with his open mouth frowning.

Pin Marker couldn’t get off the log alone; even worse, her body started to deform! She needed something to defend her from that stick man. Maybe multiplying herself and raining them?

Michael got closer to the hot log and the pinhead. Every footstep added the chance of fatality for her. It’s time to act!

Something patted Michael’s head and fell off to the ground. He diverted his focus to it. Was that her clone? That’s what he and his brother learned about her when they were in the hotel with those debuters. That clone dissolved after a blink.

The sky rained Pin Markers over the playground! Michael got back to killing her and ran while drawing the solid black circle with the circle tool on his left hand as the shield against those clones, and put it on his head. Those Pins bounced from his shield and disappeared. This may have slowed the walk to the menace to those weighty things, but he kept going and ran.

He jumped and threw the shield behind him, as he prepared to stab the pushpin! The rain was still there, but whatever!

He stabbed and drilled her into shards of hard polyester with a buzz. His head bumped onto a bunch of Pin Markers. The clone population decreased and the rain stopped as the controller died. He no longer felt those pesky things. That’s a relief.

Michael also stabbed the hot tree log with his drill, and it stuck there. That drill conducted heat from the log, and it became too hot to use. He removed the drill from his right hand quickly.

He got up, and looked around the mess he had made. Three burnt spots on the wilted grassland; shattered creatures; smell of cooking oil, papers, and plastic; nasty barf; and… weird gray clouds made out of roblox avatar heads with two faces?

He remembered he had vaporized the blue Marker that was supposed to represent Teardrop at the Pillary Ruins on earth and somehow got into the number planet, and recently, the frozen one for Ice Cube here; and it resulted in condensation. Unamused, he raised his right hand and released a blue beam at them to fade out. That was easy.

This playground needed fixing… Michael zapped both red pieces and pieces of rock to disappear with that beam. He picked his eraser and erased the burning log and the traces of barf with it. He picked his paintbrush once again and drew a new tree from the cut log of tree wood one near the seesaw. He also redrew that old green grass field with fresh grass with that paintbrush.

He coughed and sat down on blades of grass. He sighed with tiredness and thirstiness. His mouth and throat parched as a desert after some excessive exposure to the radiation of the self-manipulated sun. He drew a water bottle with his paintbrush and chugged the water to his throat. Refreshing.

He deleted his bottle with his eraser. He lay down, and stared at the sweet blue sky, smiling with grace. His mission to kill those threats from the two planets had been completed there. He cracked his joints with an arm and leg stretch smiling, knowing that. He yawned and rolled to the left, placing his hands down his head. His eyelids began to close down…

…But he realized he hadn’t checked on his brother! His eyes opened and rose back up in panic, searching for his paintbrush again. He drew his phone with that for communication. He clicked his paintbrush back to his belt and dialed Cary’s phone number on his phone rushing.

He pressed that green button and put his phone on his right ear. He leaned his sitting position with his right arm as the stand, waiting as the cadence of two-second ringback tone rang to his ear.

Booop… Booop…

He awaited his brother’s voice. He worried about his safety over there. He mumbled, “Hello? Uhh… Cary? Hello?”

No answer, only a ringing ringback signal. Was he ignoring his call on purpose? Michael feared his brother might have been turned into one of those menaces he had met here, with its dumb smile. If that’s so…

His phone beeped six times, which means the number is unavailable. His feet curled. He hung up and clicked his phone onto his lasso belt in anger. He got up and hurried towards that hang glider he left on without any damage somehow. He gripped that bar and stepped back.

He jumped and fled away from the Equation Playground, leaving white smoke for two seconds, and disappeared.

Burning like a shooting star, Michael reentered the other planet Earth with a dash. He passed through the heavy clouds, stopping the painless burn, and he saw the yellow ground with green trees!

He spun with his glider facing to the front as he fell on the blue sky. The air smelled like burning plastic. He flung his hang glider off his grip as he approached the grass. He noticed the Wireless Recovery Center had struck the ground near the hotel entrance. That must be a nice effort to kill the Markers…

The white hang glider flew, accelerating away from its owner with uncontrolled wind. Static noise bounced through the fabric.

It hit the Evil Shadow Marker! The fabric ripped as that void Marker got thrashed with the metal skeleton. It crashed into the Giant Marker’s body here and glitched! That black entity merged into it and faded away…

Michael landed with his knees on the grass, and that feeling of his head spinning. His brother told him he would protect him from the danger of those Markers here. He must be somewhere here, isn't he?

With his shaky voice, he called his brother’s name out, “Cary…!?” He dropped his face and gagged.

The ground quaked. He jerked and immediately glanced at the Giant. It’s… still here?

Michael groaned and stood up to it. He looked for that ‘normal’ stickman sight with the turns of his head. One side were pieces of shiny metal scattered near the way to an underground factory. He wondered where he was…

He sniffed, “... Cary…?”

He called his name again. His heart beating got so fast he could hear it with his ear. He took a walk around the grasslands, in hope to reunite and team up to kill those Markers.

“Bro, you’re making me worry, man…” He coughed again.

Michael’s pupils turned right. A Marker with colors resembling Rubik's cube’s, along with the grimmer, darker Purple Marker with his chainsaw next to him stood at the east, not too far. Maybe they know?

He walked near them and interrogated, “Uhh… Hey! Excuse me. Before I can kill you, do you know where my twin brother Cary is?” He held the end of his gray lasso belt. His grip on it got tighter as he spoke.

The dark purple one vibrated and pulled a frown face. He groaned and answered, “carykh_BFDI? Uhhh… He’s already with them. Sorry for your loss, I guess.” as if it’s going to make him better.

While Dark Markery spoke the last sentence, Michael cussed out loud while pulling his belt away but not detached, “THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN –”

He stopped right there. He realized one of those was his brother, infected into one of those menaces. The color scheme of that one Marker besides the dark one reminded him of his brother being a speedcuber. There are yellow as his cap, white as for the body, green and blue for his emblem, and red and orange for the bottom… That checks out.

His right arm stretched in front of them and his fingers opened as his palm lighted up smoking, but not enough to release that energy. He took a deep breath in a rage he couldn’t feel before… He shaked his head.

Dark Markery stepped backwards, raised his voice and accused that stick man, “Oh, so you’re the one sympathizing for that dead fool over there WHEN HE RUINED MY LIFE?!” He directed his chainsaw at him.

Even the Markers like him spoke and may not harm, they were still the one who needed to be killed according to what Noob wanted. Michael barked shakily, “No… but YOU GUYS ARE MINIONS! SOMEONE UP HERE… IS WAT–”

A line drew from Cary Marker forming its hand and seized him by his neck. His throat restrained from calling those menaces out further. Dark Markery watched him struggling to form words and turned to Cary Marker. His right palm dimmed.  He crawled his fingers in an attempt to push a strange line and away let out some air.

The Rubik’s cube colored one mumbled a voice… The voice both of them recognized… Targeted at one of them.

“Oh, Mike… Do you wanna join us? I promise no one’s watching you.”

Michael uttered and moaned while still at it, “No… THIS… ISN’T YOU, CARY…! DO YOU REMEMBER–”

Cary Marker tightened his grip, squeezing his neck further. Two more of the thin noodle arms came out and grabbed his hands to the bottom limit. “Hey, Giant! Look! I’m doing your command!” the Marker menace shouted in joy.

This could be the end of his life as he knew it. Even though this universe might be fictional in his and his brother’s mind, no one in real life would actually know what happened to him. He had to act sooner. He teared up.

“GOOD. DARK MARKERY. KILL. HIM. NOW.”

Giant Marker’s voice reached Dark Markery. He walked past Michael and sighed. He turned his chainsaw on with a pull. “I was about to ask you to do me a favor, but… UGHH!!” he groaned at him.

That desperate stick man tried to reach the end side of the belt with his restraining right hand, as his strength weakened from choking… interrupted blood circulation… and lacked air…

He could not reach it.

He looked at the right, and down. There was Dark Markery with his chainsaw working. The buzzing sound irritated him so much he wished he could run away… He got fuzzy about this…

The dark purple marker swung his chainsaw to the left with that blade facing horizontal. Michael turned away from his face and shut his eyes off… That noise… approaching his ear…

“OUCH…!” He heard a distancing voice.

Something knocked off and that noise dropped off to the ground.

He opened his eyes to find out the m-shaped black bird he drew thrusted Dark Markery away from him, with the chainsaw out of his hand near the stick man.

“I’M GONNA SMASH YOU WITH MY–” that Marker yelled to the bird pushing him away, but it didn’t seem to listen. Michael wasn’t sure if he referred to ‘you’ as him or that bird. It could be both…

That bird stopped and went in the opposite direction where his partner was at and Dark Markery tripped. He got up and realized his chainsaw was out of his reach. He screamed and growled, “...MY WEAPON!! GRRRRR!! CURSE YOU, STUPID BIRD!!” while he ran to follow it.

“Hey? What’s wro– WOAAAH…!?!” That bird whomped Cary Marker, also pushing him away. Those three lines loosened and retracted back to that colorful Marker as he’s going away.

Free air! Michael gasped with his mouth open for air that he’s been blocked for by that hand and panted. His shaky arms numbed, but not for long before they could sense touch again. He regained his strength! He snorted.

He took a step. That buzzing sound’s still here, but…

“MINE!” Dark Markery yelped and picked up his chainsaw while thumping forward after Cary Marker and that bird. That’s weird. Now, those menaces were distracted by that one bird he drew before he and his brother visited the hotel.

With his trusty belt and tools, it’s time to strike them down.

“Help me!” said Cary Marker aloud while still being dragged out by the bird. He spoke rather mundane, like, this isn’t how you scream for help!

Dark Markery chased after them with that chainsaw pointed at the bird.

The bird grabbed the colorful one with its nonexistent claws holding his yellow cap up to the sky and moved to the opposite, again. 

The darkful one turned over the direction and screamed, “HEY!! I’M GONNA GET YOU!!” A purple flame flamed on his cap and flew along. His chainsaw went up above the target, the bird.

“MUAHAHAHAHA!!!” he roared with laughter, ready to kill it and continue to do his mission with his partner.

SLAP! …His back hurted with a stab. He and his chainsaw fell down as the bird continued to carry his partner beyond his scope.

A blue zap of bright energy pushed him to make it worse. That heat made this moment unbearable to strike back?

He struck the yellow grass, and the energy stopped. That stench of smoke grossed him out. He stood up, and the first thing he saw? That filled black square with one of the angles hitting the ground. It stabbed him earlier. No wonder it hurted…

The second thing? It was that stupid stick man with the pac-man mouth chasing that bird and his partner, which the former had no chance of killing them because the bird flew higher so that he couldn’t get them! Or could he..?

Michael stared at his infected brother in the bright sky while he hunted him for the better. He panted as he moved with his cramping legs. The dimming sunny day might have blocked his vision with sunlight, their silhouettes made it easier to strike however.

He sketched a rock and flung it straight between the cap and the bird. The Marker fell off as that bird flew even higher!

That line of arm from the Marker approached him… He fixed his right arm on him and the blinding energy streaked from his hand to that Marker mid-air!

Cary Marker got pushed away as the zappy continued. Michael peeked with one eye.

That energy burst into bright yellow, and slid the yellowhead away as it temporarily blinded him with sun-like-light. 

His vision blurred into gradients and it became clear like a landscape, with that Marker intact still, with higher endurance than him. That just showed how invincible he is… at least to Michael.

Cary Marker retorted, “Oh? Nice try, and thank you for rescuing me.” Insincerity words were very telling of him.

Michael declared his killing, “Sorry bro, but I’m afraid I have to kill you…You know?”

He walked as he told him about his plan earlier and getting breathy and noisy for each word, “You planned to split up for us, so… I defeated those markers around the Goiky like Noob told us to… Even on another planet I found outside this world..! And you?” and he sighed and stopped his way. The distance between him and that marker was less than seven feet.

He then bowed his head and shuttered with low volume, ”How did you fail…? I– uhhh… I feel like you… Like–”

“Hey, Giant Marker! Get a load of this guy!” his ‘brother’ called the Giant purple one over there out loud, ignoring his struggling speech and stopping him. Markers don’t care about other’s feelings. They never did.

That voice disappointed him as Cary’s brother. His blood boiled, knowing that he was a Marker now; his expression didn’t matter now! Michael detached his lasso belt and tried to whip him. That strange line from the Marker blocked the belt and clutched it.

He beamed that hot energy to him and that line let go of his belt and retracted! The belt snapped back to Michael’s waist and knocked him off to the ground. He got back and picked his bucket while approaching that menace…

A large white warmer beam barred his way to Cary Marker! He threw his bucket off the beam by accident and twisted his path! That beam followed him behind! He was in the shadow and the white light clashed with the dark, cylinder shape…While running away, he turned his head and… GIANT MARKER?! It was vomiting that energy like a sick unicorn!

He put his hands down and his palms behind. They both lit up and those blue beams flashed as he ran faster than a cheetah! He left some gray smoke to block Giant’s vision before it faded away. He was way ahead of its path… Too far to reach… He put out the beam and caught some breath.

A voice screamed from afar: “HEY GIANT ONE! CAN WE TALK AFTER THIS?”

Giant Marker knew it was Dark Markery calling it since he acted tough and might disobey its command at any moment. It thought of that for a second… It decided it should crush Michael first. 

The stick man looked at that Giant, now staring at him with that hideous, same face. It levitated to the front and crashed on the ground, trembling the surroundings of North Goiky. This time, it was closer to him. A rumbling noise echoed.

Michael prepared himself to deal with this kind of earthquake. He ran towards it and raised his hand as it jumped again. Uh oh.

The Giant Marker landed even closer to him, quakes resonated harder than he anticipated, and he tripped with his legs bent straight to the front. He backed with his legs, and ran with wobbly standing up and panting.

It blocked his path with a bang! The ground quaked, but he could withstand it with a withdrawal, even the loudest rumbling sound with his arms extending!

This time, he raced to the right… He spotted the same grim purple Marker watching him at the yellow grass with the hotel far behind him. Hopefully, that Giant one didn’t block him with a–

BANG!

Only a thin natural light shined to his vision. Immense weight at his back and his head only pushed him down with soreness. His hands and knees saving him didn’t help with the spiky grass. 

He tried to rise… It pricked. His bones felt like breaking. He began to whimper on the verge of his body getting squeezed by that Marker…

A chat between Dark Markery and whoever crushed him entered his ears. What are those two up to…?

Chapter Text

“Alright, alright… This has to be said,” Dark Markery spoke first.

“WHAT IS IT? YOU. BETTER. NOT. MAKE. ME. MAD.”

He confessed, “I… actually don’t wanna be here… and I DON’T NEED TO! WANNA KNOW WHY?!”

Michael heard him screaming right into Giant Marker, and it’s helping him understand better…

“It’s because SOMEONE I HATE WAS HERE, AND I ALREADY FOUND HIM DEAD! LOOK!”

“IT DOES NOT MATTER. YOU MUST CONTINUE WITHOUT HIM. SO WE CAN CONQUER THE WORLD AND BEYOND. GOT IT? DO. NOT. LET. THE. BUSTERS. GET. US. ALL.”

That Marker protested, “NO WAY! I WANT YOU TO SEND ME BACK TO MY PLACE, AND LEAVE ME ALONE!!”

“NO. YOU ARE A PART OF OUR MISSION. JUST LIKE THE REST OF US.”

“AND I DON’T WANNA BE PART OF IT!! I TURNED carykh_BFDI INTO ONE OF YOU AND THAT’S IT!! THAT’S ALL YOU’RE GONNA GET!!”

Cary Marker came to that grim one with the chainsaw. “Did somebody say my name? Also, here’s your chainsaw.” Michael overheard that buzzing sound, and it later turned off.

“COME ON MARKERY. HE IS ALREADY BEHAVING BETTER THAN YOU. AND. YOU. WOULD. NOT. LET. ME–”

“KILL ME??? NOPE!! THE ONLY ONE GETTING KILLED HERE IS YOU!”

“Hey! Can you guys cut it out?”

“SEE? YOU. NEED. TO. SHUT UP. AND. DESTROY. THE. REST.”

Everyone went quiet. Dark Markery didn’t move even an inch. Meanwhile, Michael still whimpered trying to hold this heavy purple one with his back. Everytime it spoke, everything vibrated around him… Everytime it moved, it’s like adding more weight to his back, which is more painful than less. Heartbeats turned into heartbreak… The grass became wet… Breaths turned denser… The shadow became darker. 

Cary Marker broke the silence with a question, “...So, what do we do now?”

“I AM GOING TO CALL OUR ARMY.”

Little did it know, they were not here anymore. That stick man killed them. He couldn’t help but mask his pain with a remorseless smile. But it’s getting worrying though… Everything was silent and uncomfortable… except for his breathy sniffles and some chirps.

Dark Markery mocked Giant Marker in response, “HA! NOBODY LIKES YOU, GIANT LOSER!!” That made it angrier. Cary Marker slapped him.

“SAY IT ONE MORE TIME. AND YOU. WILL. BE. DONE. FOR.”

“SORRY!” He yelled out of spite.

“OKAY. I WILL CALL THEM LATER. NOW. FOR BOTH OF YOU.”

Cary Marker asked, “Oh! What is it?” Oh no…

“GO TO THAT GREY DIMENSION. AND. DESTROY. EVERY. REMAINING. ONE. THERE.”

That place where both Michael and his brother sent the uninfected objects there? That supposedly safe space? How did it know?

Wait… He remembered Cary’s computer had an empty canvas for the workspace, so he could add something there… Did Noob acknowledge its existence? This is unacceptable.

“THEY ARE ALL HELPLESS.”

His muscles powered up. Anger and grief took over his mind. His hand curled, crawling the dirt. That urge to scream… He struggled to rise.

Cary Marker accepted its command, “Sure thing!” while Dark Markery shivered with his squiggly mouth, not because he didn’t know where it was, but because he had genuine concern about its victims and survivors of the invasion. After all, he only wanted to go home. But what if they’re also vengeful towards his kind…? And that whimper… He was holding it back.

That vibrant Marker looked at him and asked, “What are you waiting for, Markery?” That grim one refused to answer at first, shaking his body sideways. “Huh? Come on! I know exactly where that dimension is…” Cary Marker claimed.

“I don’t know about this,” Markery replied.

“YAAAAAH!!” The hysterical stick figure screeched at everyone! Giant Marker got propelled away and crashed onto the ground as he sat back up. Dark Markery and Cary Marker turned their attention to him with his weak body and his breath trembling, staring at them with one confused, one shocked.

“Honestly… I thought Michael was dead!” said Cary Marker, stepping back.

Michael chased both of them with his right hand aimed! Cary Marker released his thin arm and grabbed his leg, and flipped that stick man far from Dark Markery with his face down! He looked like he was eating dirt…

Giant Marker rose back and womped Dark Markery with a leap! The land quaked for a second as it grew.

Cary Marker freed that leg and retracted his arm. Michael stood up and spat the dirt out. He turned around and took a step back away from that sinister large thing. He gazed at its static face. His head wobbled. He puffed despite being free from that force.

His shaky voice turned from talking to pissy yelling, “You. You decided to come here and ruin everyone’s day… and turn them into one of you! You’re all nothing like the OG Marker! He would never do that!”

Cary Marker came and talked to his face, “Oh… So, you-you’re the strongest one here, out of all of the fighters we fought. Plus, you’re my twin brother, aren’t you?”

Michael stormed his right palm to that Marker and struck him with a beam to swoon, and yelled harsher, “DON’T CALL ME THAT! I’M NOT YOUR  ‘TWIN BROTHER!’”

“Okay, okay! How about this?” Cary Marker stood up and turned his body to the Giant Marker, pulled his phone and requested, “Call the army!”

One Marker fell into the Giant’s cap, and disappeared. It grew kind of larger. Michael took his step back in preparation for anything after.

A large batch of Markers rained on its cap, and it grew bigger and bigger as it emitted white light so bright, Michael couldn’t see anything! His eyelids fluttered shut as it’s getting brighter and brighter…

He walked and looked away from it… and the light finally extinguished. He opened his eyes and turned back with his blurry vision…

A massive black and white Marker stood in front of him against the sunlight, larger than the Giant Marker. Its evil red eyes and several layers of purple glass panels stood out to its design. It had arms and legs akin to object show limbs for mobility not only for hopping around. It might put everything here in devastation…

He looked above. Inside the glasses, Cary Marker sat looking at him with his control panel. He made a noise up there, but he couldn’t process what he said… It’s too far.

Michael extended his point finger, sighed and exclaimed, “Huh… Okay… You wanna fight?! If so, then THIS IS IT!” He levitated as his belt formed a whole line of an infinity symbol on his back with his tools intact, acting as wings to fly freely.

He dashed and jumped to the air, with his hands thrusting the robot’s large hands against it. Its hands pushed him back. The stick man kept on going. The pressure got so forceful his arms started to numb.

One of its huge hands got off one of his hands and the arm fluttered to the bottom. Below, Michael still gripped its hand, hanging there with a smug face. He came down to the grass and flipped it down! A cracking sound went to his ear when it lay there.

The robot got up. Its red eyes started shining at him, and they formed a streak of red light each between him. Michael curled himself into a ball with his arm wrapping around his legs. Anything passed and burnt but the lights missed him. His skin got kind of cold…?

Michael uncurled and flashed his huge blue ray to the Giant Robot Marker! It persisted with a little burn. The robot leaped and flung him away with its right foot!

The stick man landed, arranged like a ninja squatting on the yellow grass. He hunted it and threw an eraser to its face. Its face cracked, frowned and tripped as his eraser reattached to the wing belt.

Michael grabbed the floating belt and lapped the robot’s legs tight with it extending. He wrecked the beloved hotel into a ruin with the robot. The concrete ashes caught it in dust.

The belt untied by itself and reattached to reform from Michael’s back, as he flew on it and watched his ‘brother’ tapping on some buttons. That stick man grinned and chortled looking at that poor Marker.

He coughed over those dust in the air and lifted higher. He glanced at the blue sky with clouds drifting. What if he could end this all… in space? There would be loss and stuff… but considering Noob’s demand… this should be worth it.

A tear came out of one of his eyes, and yet he kept smiling. He threw a pencil at the purple glass and it cracked with a stab. He crouched down with his palms down and soared into space, with traces of smoke and blue rays spreading for two seconds. The pencil followed him up.

Michael’s hands blazed like a rocket as he stormed away from the earth; and he persisted in zero gravity. As he knew it, he already left the Solar System.

Looking among millions of stars and beautiful nebulae, as well as planets in the dark; he detected a hopeful yellow spark above, that is not a star, but a quasar.

He could feel it getting bigger and bigger… He raised his hands at the quasar as he approached it and smirked…

Something dragged him from his legs with a swift.

He turned his eyes to… that Giant Robot Marker?! Its face looked smooth again and the crack on the glass seemed to be gone. His ‘brother’ Cary Marker somehow found his way to mend the robot while he was here.

Michael’s legs crammed with the black rounded hand with two welded white balls. He tried to pull his body out himself and bawled. His tummy cramped! He stared at the ominous, glowing red eyes while panting, tearing himself up.

That premonition of getting shot with the laser looking at him… He could not get out of this… unless?

Michael faded into transparency. Unexpected. The robot’s eyes dimmed as soon as Cary Marker from above realized while he released the laser blast button on the panel. His face formed a confusion and panic. He rushed to the edges of the room, looking for that stick man from the bottom. He was nowhere to be found…?

The giant robot crashed with nothing and stumbled the Rubik’s Marker onto the control panel, which had so many buttons and one joystick! The robot acted up and spun around the space. Inside the control room, Cary Marker juggled up and bumped around. He became dizzy and couldn’t focus on anything…

Michael came into sight again and watched them suffer due to malfunctioned operation with that filled-up green rectangle. That robot morphed into a rocket back and again as it whirled, the limbs rotated in random directions, lasers coming out short sometimes… That’s just perfect.

Michael’s mouth edge lifted while his tears flew from his eyes.

A voice of his ‘brother’ screamed, “Stop!! Stop all of this and just let me kill him!” That robot almost passed to him, and Michael dodged that. As he drifted away from both the quasar and the robot, he had an idea of thrashing those Markers again, before ending the Marker empire once, and for all.

He snatched a thick square string from his belt, filled it with white, and enlarged it, bigger than his body. He kept his eyes to the glitching Giant Robot Marker for the right angle with his right hand gripping that heavy plane with no problem.

He hurled the plane off to the glass wall of the robot! The outer layer shattered and the rest felt the deepening crack. The Giant Robot Marker propelled further away from Michael and the quasar.

Cary Marker slid off to the edge, furthest away from the control panel. He fled to it as the ground tilted and pressed that red stop button. The robot became stable again… except that sharp white square plane almost broke through the control room and it made the wall cracked.

“...What?” he whispered, annoyed by that stick man’s attempt at killing him. That Marker manifested a yellow power around the square while grunting and ejected it out of his way, targeting the yellowheaded stick man.

Michael ascended towards the shining quasar of the galaxy with his hands up. He formed a ball of blue energy to make the damage even stronger, with his hands.

He looked down, and spotted that white plane he made rotating to him, also getting closer. “What in the–”

The surface of the plane stuck to his feet. It drove him quicker as his vision got brighter even faster! He crossed under the quasar and the plane got vacuumed away! His lungs compressed being there and it felt like being underwater. He got out and the ball he held turned brighter than the quasar? He turned around, skipping over the bright larger cloudball of a ‘blackhole’.

His heart pounded faster. He became manic as he knew this war would end. He grinned and chuckled like crazy. He eyed the robot approaching him with an open arm. Michael threw himself and the ball at it, while the robot’s eyes almost shot him. They all crashed with everyone burning like a comet, with the robot starting to darken and melt. Michael couldn’t see everything but that robot and that Marker faker tripping down.

Michael shouted with triumph, “YES!” That smell of ink and plastic might be diabolical for the space environment and the earth, but it’s the best he could do.

A heat wave hit the control room. Cary Marker floated and inspected the outside through the cracked glass wall. He found Michael pushing the robot by its face whimpering and staring at him with pride.

The Marker pressed one of the buttons on the melting panel. It’s supposed to exterminate Michael off with laser eyes. He checked that guy again; he still pushed through it?!

Cary Marker clicked that button faster in spite of it multiple times. He looked at him again. He realized the robot was melting to death, and now he started melting from the heat! How come Michael didn’t melt and just sweated? That Marker exclaimed, “Michael! You’re really strong!”

“Thanks? Uhm… Now, you have to DIE!” Michael screamed at him with his hands getting a lot hotter from the robot.

Cary Marker turned away from the control panel and observed the faint ever-closing planet earth, specifically the North Goiky, even though the energy light covered the view. He watched the crack on the wall spread more and became weaker than last time when a certain number attempted to smash it.

He panicked and told the stick man, “Okay! Just a heads up… You’re gonna hit the planet earth… and you’re gonna destroy Goiky!”

Cary Marker came back to the panel and pressed a bunch of buttons in desperation. They didn’t do anything now. “Oh my gosh… How can I fix this now?!” he whispered to himself.

As all entered the earth atmosphere, Michael’s smile faded and on second thoughts, bringing himself here at once was a horrible idea. He struggled to get his hands off the burnt Giant Robot Marker’s face, but they both were boiling glued! He felt alarmed, so he braced himself for the damage with his eyes closed. His ‘wings’ fell down from his back and flew.

The purple glass walls shattered as they passed on the clouds. Cary Marker fell down to the ground of yellow grass and green trees. He stood up and released his thin black arm in an attempt to grab the robot…

It’s too hot. He drew his arm back and looked above as the burning trash struck him…

and everything around. KABOOM!

A large hot mushroom-shaped cloud formed over the Grasslands, setting most of the trees and the grass burning to wilt. The last Markers were destroyed into several large pieces, and small pieces of the smaller one which slowly faded away. Yellow and black inks splashed and condensed into… something else.

Meanwhile, Michael got thrown away in the air by the force of the explosion. The sudden breeze of the air came to his skin, and his body hurt. Everything hurt and cramped.

Michael spun and tried to land near the Grasslands. He slid in the air and landed with all fours. The ground had been sprinkled with sad ashes, and it smelt like ink. The air filled with dust and smoke. Beyond that, he noticed there were people, mostly objects, chatting around and some formed a crowd. It looked like the victims he killed were restored…

He sat down and looked at the ground, powerless. He whimpered in disbelief and regret. He wondered. If the victims he killed came back like normal… shouldn’t his brother come back too?

Chapter Text

In the Evil Shadow Marker’s void, Forty-Three and Cary held their hands to keep them close, with the stick man’s right arm being held before the wrist. The alien looked fixated by Cary’s face as she smiled with honesty; while the stick man averted his eyes and hummed to come up with a way to escape from this reddish space hell.

Back when the twins were both in the Grasslands for the first time, they both encountered that shadowy, evil Marker. His brother, Michael caught it with his lasso belt. He then beat it up; and after he threw it away, he blasted his blue beam at it, which disabled it for a while. Cary thought about the last part, and it made him realize he hasn't tried that yet.

He shifted his attention to Forty-Three and started talking, “Okay Forty-Three, I’ve got an idea.”

“What?”

Cary demonstrated, “So… my brother actually quote unquote killed that Marker when he and I first came to the grasslands. And… Uhh… And he used his zappy! You know? That beam that goes like, BFFFFFT!” He put his left hand out of Forty-Three’s hold with his palm facing right, and it beamed a light blue ray zap. The sound zapped louder than how he grunted to mimic it. He stopped zapping and watched that trail of the ray passing away in the endless void. That sound echoed. It reminded both of them of Four.

Forty-Three stared at the trail trailing away, and commented, “Oh! What’s the idea, Yellow..?” She looked at Cary’s face, curious.

He proposed, “Hmmm… What if we try to zap it away, and then we can get out of here?” He gazed at the short alien, smiling. Forty-Three doubted his plan would work, because the Evil Shadow Marker wandered too fast to catch here; and it would be loud as heck.

She smiled with that unsure expression. She shrugged with her left hand still holding his right arm albeit looser; but she agreed anyway, “Uhh… Okay. Sure, I guess–”

Cary whined. Suddenly, that pain on his wrist spiked up. He snatched his own right arm from her and massaged his hand. Forty-Three startled and apologized, “Ah! My bad!”

“It’s all right! Let me take care of this…” Cary drew his bandage wrapped around his right wrist with his paintbrush, while wiggling his legs to keep the distance around the algebralien.

Forty-Three looked at her four-fingered hands and turned them around. They seemed whiter? Her pupils shrinked. “Huh?!” She turned her attention to the stick man drawing on his wrist and putting his paintbrush back to his belt.. He also appeared brighter than she would expect! The whole void lighted on! She peeped everywhere; and right above them, she found the brightest ‘star’ expanding in every second they stayed!

Cary found his white bandage blinding, and squinted away in disgust. “Why is this so bright…?” he complained.

“Yellow!” Forty-Three shouted. Cary’s head flashed to her. He stopped his legs and uttered, “Whuh? I wanna ask–”

“A light!” she interrupted and directed her finger at the spark. The stick man peeked at it. He blinked his eyes away to her and exclaimed, “Wait what?!” He stared at the alien, both bewildered by that thing. Everything in their visions tinted with white as they breathed! That TV snow stopped occurring. That one Marker disappeared.

Cary put his hands crossing below his shoulders, and the number forty-three-shaped alien. That squishy trait and this unusual warmth nature made him auspicious of what happened next… 

“Is this a sign of escape?! It’s getting warmer here!”

Forty-Three gasped by the word ‘escape.’ “Huh? Really?!” She chewed her own saliva while she murmured, “...right.” She insisted, ”It better be!”

“Uhh… I can’t see anything here! It’s too bright!” Cary exclaimed as he squinted his eyes and smacked off his eyelids. That smell of smoke proceeded to flow in the dissolving void. He sucked his own mouth and held his breath because dust also flew here. He closed his eyes and covered them with his hands.

Forty-Three on the other hand didn’t feel much from those substances, aside from blinking her eyes to eject those dusts. She rushed to the stick man’s gleaming body; and as she folded her arms around his body, pure white completely took over her vision. She slammed her eyelids off. This time, she saw maroon red which dimmed by itself.

The alien and the stick man’s backs soiled with discomfort, like they had been lying down in dry ashes. At the same time, they felt grounded, and cooler than whatever just happened; and the fact was, this was not a bed at all. They both sniffed a heavy dust. They began to hear unintelligible voices of people shouting and rejoicing… and coughing.

“Achoo!” Forty-Three sneezed and opened her eyes to an odd beige haze in the sky. She reckoned softly, “We’re… back…?”

She raised up with her legs folded on the ground. In the haze of ash and dirt, shadows of living objects and Davidians around them ran around the field, sometimes hugging and crowding on one random spot or two. 

She heard coughs by her side. It was Cary’s, tingling dirty on the ashes like he refused to get up from his bed in the morning. Alas, the yellowheaded stick man had it worse with the ashes. The alien pitied him, with her eyes softened.

She viewed the landscape of the foggy grasslands. With the power of environment manipulation, she cleared up the haze with mere her squinting eyes. The ordinary blue sky and the sun radiated to reveal those people were real... However, those trees surrounding the gloomy grasslands died down to branches. The hotel and the Recovery Center some knew had been wrecked down to ruins. This wasn’t what they all recognized as the Grasslands of the North, was it? She would fix all of these, maybe later. For now, she’s glad the Marker shenanigan is over, with her contented smile.

Forty-Three stood up, and gave Cary a blow of reassuring cold wind by her mouth. Her blow wiped his body clean, though he still coughed with his lungs and throat itchy by dust. He expelled it one last time with a sudden jerk.

She reassured, “Better? I cleaned it for you.” She patted his head.

Cary picked his attention to her. He sighed in relief and murmured, “...yeah. Uh… Thank you, Forty-Three.”

“No problem,” the algebralien chuckled. “So, where is your–”

Cary turned to the sky. He bent his upper body to his legs, and struggled to stand up. He trembled with his one foot standing and his arms fluttering like a bird. His numb legs fell back down, spreading the dark ashes away from his body on the ground. His body needed readjusting from non-gravitational space before he could navigate. “Oh gosh…”

“Oof… Lemme help you, dude!” Forty-Three ran in front of that stick man and pulled her hands down. Cary picked them up and rose up with his feet. His limbs came off tingling as he stood up, but they stabilized as he stared at the short-ish alien. He took a deep breath and almost all of them stopped shaking.

“Okay,” he uttered as he slid his grip off Forty-Three’s hands. Her hands had that silky texture and it felt so good. She said, “No need to thank me again.”

They both wondered as they observed the vast land with one worrying. The alien cleared her throat and continued, “So…”

“MICHAEL!” Out of the blue, Cary screamed and stormed away from Forty-Three before she could pronounce anything further. He passed the ruins and dodged those people in an unasked manner.

“Huh?! I’m not even– UGH!” Forty-Three groaned. Who in the world is Michael? she thought. That stick man turned his head left-right, and he raced to the right to distance; and it sent her into confusion and concern with her one eyebrow raising.

She recalled that time when she said she looked forward to meeting his brother, whom he described looking like himself, but ‘slightly different.’ Could Michael be his brother or something? she asked in her mind. The alien let out her sigh and walked afloat way after him, who might be already behind the hotel ruins.

Cary raced his way past the ruins in panic. He tried to locate his brother Michael among people yapping by shaking his head left to right. He spotted him standing sick with two knees down and both of his hands on the right. That lasso belt was no longer on his belt? The guilt suddenly filled his mind with his eyes widened in shock. What the fuck.

Cary rushed in front of his brother and stopped by. He couldn’t stand him weeping down with his head down on the floor desperately like he lost his very own brother, when he was right here! Cary whimpered in dismay, “Michael…? Are you okay?!”

That voice unsettled him to the nerves. Michael upped his eyes upon his face, sniffing and intimidated by his own brother with the similar cartoon stick man body. But the truth is, he came to his face to apologize and comfort him, because this was his true self.

Michael’s arms went weak. “No!” He hit his head to the ground as he began to sob in pain. The twins couldn’t believe this whole Marker-killing thing being that serious, but here we are.

Cary with his whole heart, turned his knees down and cuddled his brother up with his arms wrapped on his back. He too started sniffling on his shoulder, though his brother quietened his sob. The warmth and this wet body overwhelmed his thoughts.

Cary mumbled, “I’m sorry I’ve failed you.”

Michael looked at his head and nodded. He then wrapped his arms around his brother’s body too as acceptance of his apology. His body wasn’t any better with ashes. That hug and those noises made him woozy…

Something tossed by their ears with a cling. The twins took their eyes to the left. It was Michael’s lasso belt snaking before them. It must have flown away when he’s here…

Cary sighed and released his arms off Michael’s body. He approached the belt and grabbed it to take it back to who it belonged. On his walk, this belt appeared dusty and darker than he wore now. He blew the dust off to uncover its true color, that was shades of gray.

He sat down in front of his brother and stretched the belt down on the ground between them. The tools for animating were still there, with inclusion of a phone. “So, uhh... what happened…?” he asked while looking at it.

Michael gazed at his eyes trying to steady his breath. He whimpered, “Okay… so… after I went back here… I… found you being one of them… and… next to you… another was there… He was like… purple and… I saw him… with his chainsaw…”

“Mhm…” Cary nodded as he described that one Marker that dragged him down to a factory.

”You… uhh… you had those colors… of a Rubik's Cube… I think…?”

“Me? One of them…? Uhm… I don’t think it was me... Trust me, bro.” Despite being shaken up by his condition, Cary reassured.

“Really…? I had to kill you… because you were being careless and stuff… and… you were controlling the robot..! I killed him too, and I ended up destroying this place…”

Cary pulled his breath to his throat. “Oh..! We learned about it earlier… didn’t we?” he replied, proud of his brother, considering the power it held according to Battery… ”And honestly… that must be exhausting.” He sighed.

“Yep, it is,” Michael replied with a steadier, yet quiet voice. “...but worse.”

Cary moved his knees closer to his brother. He informed him, “Anyway, I said that one Marker you described having colors of Rubik’s Cube wasn’t me… because I was actually in the red void with Forty-Three, the algebralien. Uhm… They’re a fusion of Four, Two, X, Nine, and more actually. They told me they all fused to kill the Markers…”

Distracting away from Cary’s blending ramble, Michael stared at his lasso belt with his droopy eyes. It looked like it would hurt him tight on his waist if he wore it right now, and there’s no point in wearing this anyway.

He sighed. He fixed his sitting position and put the belt on his brother’s laps, hoping he wouldn’t notice it. He went back on listening to his reasoning on why the Marker was not his brother.

“... They told me that one yellow Marker wasn't them! So I think… um… in that logic, that one Marker you saw, was not me at all. I hope that clears your worry away.”

Cary’s smile and his soft yet tired voice soothed his nerves; nevertheless, his whole body still felt cramped and dizzy, but not as severe as before. Michael sighed and got himself standing droopily, though it still hurt, sort of.

Cary stood back up too. The belt on his lap fell near him, but he didn’t pay much attention to it. He picked his phone from the one around his wrist. He turned it on a sick picture as his lockscreen wallpaper. The time said 4:36. The last time he checked the time, it was probably 4:15.

As he was about to look around, his phone buzzed and a new notification box among the others showed up below the time.

My bro Michael: Missed call

He eyed the belt on the ground. There was a phone on that belt that belonged to his brother. Cary realized he tried to call him, and at that time, he was in that hellish place with no signal. He could talk about this later in the hotel.

Michael rasped, “Thank God, it was really you, bro. So, can we like… rest… or.. mmm… go to the hospital, maybe…?” He cleared his throat and stuck his palm onto his forehead. It was hell.

Cary took a glance on his phone, then turned away to look at the now-wrecked hotel. They both could not rest there. And for the hospital, he would build it, but he and the crew didn’t know anything about medical stuff and wasn't interested in studying and applying it on this creation anyway. Another problem; even the nearest hospital the twins knew was in the real world they lived in, and there’s no way to get out, unless Noob got them out of here. Cary chose to rest here, however, he and his brother needed to rebuild this barren land first. “Uhh… We can rest here, for now,” he suggested. “But… I’m afraid we need to–”

“Reconstruct it?” Forty-Three somehow came to sass around him without warning. The twins jerked by her sudden appearance.

Cary replied, “...yyeah..? I was about to say that!”

“Welp, I’ve got ya covered!” she exclaimed in excitement.

The alien bounced off the ground to grace somebody with her. She slapped the ashy ground with her hands and her glimmering power started to emerge with multiple colors of algebraliens’ the twins recognized. As the power formed a ring around her, the ground stabilized and it returned to upbeat yellow grass. The Power of Forty-Three blew throughout the Grasslands, undoing destruction with a spark. That grass raced to the bound!

The ruin of the hotel rumbled as it rebuilt by itself and by a blink, reverted to the nice beloved building. The Recovery Center had been replaced in its original place. The power brought those greens back to life and the environment had never been brighter with all the grasslands restored! Everyone else cheered and some had already entered the hotel.

Cary picked his brother’s belt and hung it on his shoulder. He rose up to find out everything around him had been reverted to what it was… He shook his head at a random pace to look more in surprise. “Oh! Thanks!” he said.

Forty-Three descended proudly with the twins witnessing the transformation with her power, in real time! She sighed, “Much better.”

Michael took a look at the hotel; his mouth opened in frank impression and fatigue. He wanted to go inside and lay down on the pink couch there… Just as he was about to make his walk, Forty-Three stopped his way by greeting with her hand waving. “Oh! Hi, Michael! It’s nice to meet you!”

He gasped. “Hey… Uh… How do you know my name?”

She explained, “I was with your brother in that prison. He talked about you, and when we got back here I heard him screaming your name! You’re Yellow’s brother, aren’t you??”

That stick man with a funny face corrected, “You mean… Cary? And, yeah… Wait.” He missed a beat, for saying his brother’s real name.

“Cary?” The algebralien didn’t know about that.

The shaded stick man rambled to him, “Oh– I told them that nickname because… if we told everyone here who we really are, we could’ve not done all of this well…! Also, our last name means that color in Chinese… I’m sorry if that came off as racist, because I didn’t mean it! Whoops!”

“It’s okay…” Michael reassured him. Cary controlled his fast breath and uttered while posing awkwardly, “Yeah yeah!” He should’ve talked about this in the hotel…

Michael greeted the alien, “Forty-Three, nice to meet you too. You know our real names now, right…?”

“Yeah? Is there anything wrong with it?”

The stick man lowered his head to her nonexistent ear and advised under his breath, “Don’t tell anyone about that outside of your own… and don’t tell it to everyone else to get us. Just to know we have a life out there, okay?”

“Sure!” the yellow alien agreed and gave him a thumbs up.

“Also, I saved the world from this ‘Marker’ thing. You’re welcome,” he confessed. He spoke with a louder voice this time. The alien nodded to that statement.

Seeing Michael interacting with somebody not-so-new he met in the void, Cary’s heart melted. He became relieved, knowing she was free from the void, and everything had been taken care of. His brother got up and got along with him. The former turned his head at the algebralien, smiling with his eyes tired.

Forty-Three pointed this out with concern, “Hey! You look ill, dude.”

Michael replied, “Yeah. That’s why we’re going to the hotel now.”

She wished him a recovery, “Oh! Get well soon!”

“Thank you, Forty-Three. Uhh… We’ll see you all on the internet, I guess.” Yes, he’s aware of her being a fusion of other algebraliens. That’s why he said ‘you all.’

She waved her hands. “Bye, Michael, and bye Cary!”

Cary took a glimpse of her face, and said it back with his hand waving, “Bye, Forty-Three.”

He looked back and told him, “Alright. Let’s go.” She watched the twins walk far away from her, both looking tired, but one with the Pac-Man mouth had it worse… It’s crazy to think one of them actually saved the Goiky and the world from those Markers. At this time, the twins had entered the hotel, maybe resting in the lobby.

Cary and Michael entered the hotel by the entrance. The calm pink painted all over this lobby, just as they and everyone else see it as usual. The Power of Forty-Three didn’t ignore the interior; the couches and the tables had been rearranged to what it was before that invasion, and the elevator had been restored to function again. And for the other floors, it’s probably the same. But for now, the twins stayed on this floor.

Michael went to the couch beside the Stuff For Your Self shop, lying down with his face sideways. Cary sat on the puffy chair, next to the round table and that couch his brother rested. He put his brother’s belt on the table. They both chilled out there to make a conversation, comfy on their own.

Cary pulled his phone from his belt and turned it on. He asked, “So, why did you call me?”

“I… I wanted to check you up. uh… I didn’t know that you… were in that void before I arrived back here,” he murmured.

“Oh.”

And the conversation went on as the volume of chatters outside dropped.

Forty-Three observed the crowds of BFDI Mini contestants, weirded out to think those are people she did not recognize chattering and fighting, besides… some Davidians. “Who are these people?” she talked to herself, bored. She averted her attention to the grass and sighed. She bent her arm and snapped her finger, sending those crowds back to where they belonged, and retaining the TPOT contestants in the grasslands.

Those few objects chatted about something about her… and Two… She desired to return to what she was… There’s no point of her being this body anymore.

A curious pink rubber eraser approached her, asking about their and the rest of the contestants’ whereabouts. “Hey, random thing. Where’s Two, and everybody else?”

She told him, “Erm… Two will be right back, Eraser. Just give them some time.” The yellow algebralien winked. The eraser’s face turned irritated. He responded, “That doesn’t answer my question.”

”You’ll see. And… for everyone else, I don’t really know where. Go find them yourself.”

His grumpy face escalated into a mild fearful one with wrinkles. “Oh… Thank you…!” Without any further words, Eraser ran away from her in a hurry, like she scared him when she did not. She thought that’s because he was missing something, or someone. It made sense, considering there’s around 29 people out of 41 missing here, and those candidates.

Well, it’s time.

Forty-Three took a deep breath. She spread her hands and wrenched herself across, grunting in struggle. Her voice split as her body started to show gradients of green to gray, growing more face features and limbs in precise spots. As the fusion stretched like a cheese pull, the gradients split even further into green, blues, yellow, and three grayscale colors of different shades, with her shape deformed into refining shapes of six integers and a variable. So did the voice with screamings and more grunts with varying pitch coming out of their mouths. The pull shrunk thinner as Two, Four, X, Six, Seven, Nine and Eight ripped themselves from each other’s body, with some crying out.

Those algebraliens slipped out of their bodies on the grass, panting in exhaustion. They all were distressed in pain by the split, though everyone managed to calm down fast and stood up one by one. They looked around the Grasslands, while the number Four stared angrily at Two. There were no Markers left here.

“Good riddance, guys!” the number Seven shouted. Everyone but Four jumped and cheered in triumph, despite they didn’t really kill them all.

“TWO!” Four interrupted, calling out somebody before him. The shouts stopped with some of the numbers looking at both of them. “Huh?” The green number asked.

“That was a horrible idea!” that blue number complained. Fusing into one was the last resort for Two. They reasoned in disappointment, “Yeah, but that’s the best we could do, Four! What else could we do?”

Four told them, “I tried to ask Five and Ten to join us, but they both refused to believe me!”

“Oh. I wish they were here to help us,” Two sighed.

Six held a broken skateboard with Nine and were fixing it using their powers. The former overheard Two and Four’s conversation. She ranted to them, “I actually tried to get them both to join after I got a call from you, but that purple number accused you of lying? What a nerd.”

Two commented, “Oh, geez! They seem hurtful.” Four’s expression showed an indifference and he shifted to a raging faced alien looking at that green number.

Six replied, “Yeah, that’s what they are.” She added, ”Also they said Ten wasn’t there, acting like I didn’t see him climbing that tree they sat under when we were about to start our game sesh.” Meanwhile, she and Nine let off the gradiented skateboard completely mended, and the former kicked it to the white number with his sunnies as he caught it with his feet. He thanked her, “Thanks, broski!”

Four retorted to Six’s story, “We probably only needed the double-digit one…”

Two responded, “Meh… If that’s your suggestion–”

“And WE failed BECAUSE OF YOU! You were the one taking my contestants!” Four snapped back with his accusationary finger at that number two-shaped alien. 

He went from his fellow’s failure to them failing the Marker-killing mission? That’s not the reason why their group lost to that void Marker! Two objected, “Huh? You are blaming me now?! And, how does that time from two years ago have anything to do with this?”

Six snuck to Two’s side. She defended them, “Yeah, Four! It wasn’t even their fault! That pitch-black thing was too sneaky for all of us!”

Those even numbers began to quarrel about their failure and whose fault, when it was all the past. As the argument flared up, X and Nine joined in an attempt to stop them; but this only got worse as Four threatened all of them, screaming like a crow. Seven and Eight stepped away from those chatters, tying their arms close.

“Don’t get involved, Seven,” the cool gray one whispered to their buddy. Their buddy in question had his mouth squiggly and widened eyes. He had this urge to tell everyone over there to stop arguing, but why risk it when he could go home?

“Man… I wanna go hooome…” Seven halted on his way to look over some other group far from them at the grasslands. His smile grew slightly.

“Well, then, let’s go.” Eight kept on walking backwards as their arm disconnected from the number-seven black alien. They stopped as they noticed him staring to the left. What’s going on?

“Uh… Seven?” they called him. He didn’t respond. And so, they turned their face to that direction. “Oh.”

Cary had been trying to call Noob through his phone over the past minutes, and yet they didn’t pick up. He only heard those same beeping sounds, and it’s getting frustrating for him. He grunted and rolled his eyes as he listened to the six ringing tones. “Why aren’t they responding?” he muttered.

Michael came up with an assumption of them, not very clear though. He replied calmly, “Maybe they’re busy doing something else… or sleeping… Try that again later, Cary.”

“Alright.” The shaded stick man hovered his phone screen to his face and decided to text their mom about this situation.

Michael turned over and started at the ceiling. There was nothing out of the ordinary. He raised his hand and clicked his finger to see what happened.

The volume of people’s chatter outside the lobby increased. Those noises hit his nausea worse. He twitched his body out of his rest and gagged. He covered his mouth with his hands.

That threw his brother off. He slammed his phone to the table and asked, “Need to vomit??”

Michael could only nod, as his cheeks expanded for release.

“Um… let’s go to the kitchen!” Cary got off the chair and headed to the door next to a wonderful painting, and opened it for him. Michael rushed to the room and found his way to a sink. He gagged and threw up his last meal he had out of his mouth and water. It didn’t look nor smell appetizing.

He turned the tap on and let the water run to get rid of the stink in the sink. He went to a refrigerator and chose bottled water sitting inside. He closed it and went back to the sink to turn the tap off. There were bits of the barf inside, but it should be good now.

Michael headed out of the kitchen and rested back on the couch, like he did earlier. This time, his head eased out of the pain, even if his body were still the same.

Cary closed the door and sat back down on the chair. “Do you feel better now?”

“Pretty much.”

“That’s a relief,” Cary returned.

Michael adjusted his position for his rest to get himself more comfortable. He paid attention to his brother’s arms, picking up his phone and doing something with it. That’s when he spotted a white bandage wrapped around his wrist. He told him while putting his bottle to the table, “Say, I noticed you have a bandage on your right wrist. What happened…?”

“About that, Dark Markery dragged me to the underground factory with this hand and… well…” Cary explained his experience before he realized his brother was staring at him frightened by the mention of that one Marker. He questioned, “What’s the matter?”

A crowd of algebraliens continued to argue about their defeat, and now everyone yelled to Four to stop? Two couldn’t bother to say any word about this… And so, they stepped away. Nine advised this argument in worry, “Hey… We could have worked together… and maybe get our bonds stronger!”

Four threatened all of them following that white number, “I’ve come to realize that all of you are useless and uncooperative! And especially Two! And that’s why I am gonna get you the worst FOR INVOLVING ME IN THAT MESS!”

“Four! Stop this! We tried our best, y’know?” An X-shaped alien begged him.

“X is right! Four, you better quit threatening us and just move on!” Six yelled at the mad blue number, hoping he would stop.

“EEEYYEARGGG”

Four ignored their requests and screeched on all of them! However, they all resisted, only sliding by 2 inches. That screechy wasn’t that effective for more people. Six deadpanned, “Is that all you can do?”

That four-shaped alien’s pupils slid to her. His eyebrow leaned inwards in rage, because that’s not the only thing he could do to her. He grunted with his teeth gritting, as he was about to shoot her with his zappy.

Six hyperventilated and tried to find her way to circumvent this. She turned her head around at the vast yellow grass and trees. She noticed another group of her kind in the distance. Are those Five, Ten and the five Zeroes?! That purple one rejected Two’s help, so…

“Uhmm… Four! This is Five! Say hi, Five!” she said as she waved her hands to them.

Four’s anger grew higher with the coming of those algebraliens, and worse, he didn’t like the number five. He blasted the white beam energy at the group! As the beam passed through, Six walked into it without awareness; and it pushed her towards the group?! She screamed in pain.

“Six! Noo!!” Nine whined as Four continued to push her away with his zappy. Two came back to see that, concerned. “Four?” they called.

Four stopped the zap and lowered his arm. He looked at them, careless of the consequence of what happened to that azure-colored number. “What.”

“You can always get back to that pillary place, you know?” They advised him about the place he and X used to host back in BFB, so that he would calm down seeing his contestants again.

“Hm.” Four drifted his eyes away from the number Two, with the consideration now on his mind. He loved his contestants, didn’t he?

“X, let’s go,” he invited that yellow variable next to him.

That’s what Two expected! They waved their hand goodbye to both of them as they faded out. “See you later, Four and X!” That BFB duo disappeared after they finished saying that sentence.

A yelling echoed through their ears.

Five listened to that argument from the other side. They guessed Four, Two and Six were right about saving the world from the Markers, but it’s too late now. They couldn’t fathom anything about the whole thing, because they thought markers? As in inanimate objects for drawing? But since they all got teleported to the gray void with two screens and the Zeroes told them, they understood now. How about those numbers participating though?

They watched that crowded one, and it looked like Six waved at them while taunting Four? And then that dark blue one propelled the lighter one with his zappy! Six screamed and she got pushed towards them and their gang?!

Five commanded, “Back off!”

Everyone walked away from her. That six-shaped alien tumbled with her face down in front of them. Everyone stopped. Five looked at the gang with two walking away from those colorful numbers. Among those two, the black one greeted them in the distance, “Hey, Five! What’s up?”

They looked back at Six in the mix of confusion and anger. Was that number gonna tell anything? Five yelled to everyone with two fading away, “WHERE HAVE YOU GUYS BEEN?!”

Six got out of her lie and sighed. She explained everything while wiping the dust off her arms. “Five, listen up. You refused to join us in the fight, and I just heard that Four tried to tell you and Ten that, but you didn’t believe us! Because of this, we literally lost to those things! Oh yeah, you also accused Two of lying, when we all saw it in real time! What were you doing?!”

That confrontation struck them with guilt. That’s something they couldn’t just brush it off with words. Their mind flustered with this kind of situation. “Oh! No wonder you didn’t answer my call. Turns out, you’re right?!”

“Yeah! I told you so.”

“I actually changed my mind, because we had some ideas on how to defeat them, but someone else had to interrupt our plan and sent all of us to that gray void!” Five ranted.

The Zeroes had a say about the interruption. Zero3 told them, “That’s good though. We could’ve died because the tree was breaking.”

“Wrong! The tree was breaking because of those things! We could’ve died because of them!” Zero1 objected to his similar-looking appearance.

“Oh! Right, right,” the zero one nodded.

Zero1 scolded Five, “Well, you never listened to me, Five!”

“What made you think inviting a cannibal and a loner’s a good idea, Zero?!” they questioned him. He tried to come up with a reason besides to kill those Markers coming to the Equation Playground with a long thinking hum. Fourteen’s a danger to everyone and Fifteen couldn’t help with this situation, he knew.

“That’s enough.” Six interrupted. “And it’s fine. We can talk about this later.”

“Oh. Yaayy…!” the gray one said with an embarrassing blush on his cheeks.

”And Five? You mind apologizing to us?” Her tone shifted to slight resentment to that nerd, demanding an apology from them. Whatever. Five grunted and blunted, “Sorry. There! I said it!” They crossed their arms.

“That’s the spirit!” Ten encouraged them, despite the conflict and how insincere that one in front of him sounded.

“Apology accepted.” Six grinned, showing her thumbs up anyway… But Five warned her, “Unless you keep on nagging me to fight against stupid stuff! We’re good, okay?”

“Okay, I promise! And…” As Six was about to call Ten’s name, he yawned. Disruptive, but at least he covered his mouth.

The heavy-eyed orange number smacked his lips, and apologized, “...Sorry about that.”

“Eh, it’s alright. What do you wanna say?”

He addressed, ”I wanna apologize for not coming to fight. I was too sleepy, and I thought it’d be nice if I slept inside the tree instead of my house.”

“Oh… Take your time, Ten.”

Ten usually helped with anyone in trouble doing anything they couldn’t. Maybe next time. He said with his cheerful smile, “If you are in trouble and need help, you can always call me!”

“You said you slept.” Six reminded him of what he just said about sleeping inside that tree. It’s not as always as he thought.

He added about helping, said with understandable guilt, “Oh… yeah. That’s an exception then. We sometimes need a break.”

Two came by Six. For whatever reason, they felt bad for her because she was zapped by that number Four. Also, they greeted the gang, “Hey, guys!”

Among the group with the Zeroes cheering and Five bored, Ten answered, “Hi, Two! I’m glad to see you.”

“Me too. I’m here to check up on Six, since she got zapped by Four and I already took care of them,” Two told him. They turned their head to the azure-colored number and asked, “Six, are you okay?”

She answered, “Yeah, I’m completely fine, Two. That zappy was cold! Does he always act like this?”

“I don’t know,” they shrugged. All they knew was Four acted like a madman to then-his-contestants back then, and they didn’t know he could zap and screech like that.

“Oh… So, can we go back now?” Six asked.

Seven, Eight and Nine went behind her. Five’s gang and they all agreed. It seemed like they all couldn’t wait to go back to the Equation Playground, like they wanted to play there and have fun all before that invasion happened, with no panic from the outside at all.

Two let them all leave. “Well, sure! Have fun there!” They waved their hand.

“Alright, let’s go, yeah, see ya…” several people uttered from the crowd, as they flew themselves out of the earth one by one, leaving white smokes of the shapes of their body and a trail that faded after two seconds.

It was a pleasure to meet their friends in the Grasslands… and the ones who tried to save it all when they were fused with others, even though there were some troublesome interactions from some of them and most of them all had to battle against those Markers. And now, the competition for The Power of Two resumes!

Two snapped their finger. It took them straight to the hotel, standing next to Gaty, who had been trying to find them on the yellow third floor. She got her attention, relieved by their appearance, and greeted, “Oh! Hey, Two!”

To the first floor, Michael had been dozing steadily on the long pink couch with one of his arms stuck out. Maybe good for him because his voice cracked at that time he told his brother a tale about his experience with Dark Markery. Cary advised him to sip the water and take a nap, and so he did.

Cary had his goosebumps after hearing that story, disgusted. He wouldn’t say those Markers themselves were that evil. He came up with a theory that Noob programmed them to be evil (besides Dark Markery because he’s already evil that way) in his mind, while chilling on the armchair.

Hmmm… If Noob wanted to talk after the twins killed them Markers, why didn’t they call back by now? Did they have a mental breakdown or something? He’s not sure about that, but time would tell.

Cary picked his phone up, hopped on Discord, and typed on the Jacknjellify crew server:

Hi everyone! I just want to let you all know someone had kidnapped me and my brother into the BFDI universe for some reason, and they said to kill these “markers” here (which we did but I lost and my brother solved it all). Right now, my borther is sleeping on this couch at the hotel lobby and I’m really tired. And yes, we’re still alive 👍

I’ll let you know when we get our computers back irl. Oh yeah, that someone might’ve hijacked your electronics idk

Send. That message was delivered into the general chat to assure the crew that he and his twin brother still lived. He doubted people believed his words; but it’s true to the twins’ eyes. Maybe he could take a picture to prove it and post it on his Twitter account. He only had to wait for the perfect time though.

And now, it’s time for him to rest and get ready for their first night in Goiky. Ever.

Chapter Text

The twins rode the elevator at this hotel. The night waited for them as the light above illuminated this moving room. It was nice?

Nothing much happened. Cary typed something about what happened that day on his phone, while Michael stared at the dark floor in oblivion.

Ding! A subtle yet notifying bell from nowhere cued, and the elevator door opened by itself. A door outside stood close in front of it. Cary went out of the platform and swung the door open. Michael followed him as they walked out of what used to be the bathroom on the highest floor.

Beyond the bathroom, those stars filled the sky in the (not-so) dark night, barely shining the Grasslands, besides the lamp between the doors. The tiles on the floor here chilled the twins’ feet so as their body and the air flew just like any other night in real life. Hereon, it was quiet.

They both sat down in the middle of the rooffloor.

Michael spoke first with his weak voice, “Okay… I have to tell you something.”

“What is it?” said Cary with his face on the phone while typing.

“I always thought I was being watched. I… Uh– I dunno why but, since the whole Marker shenanigans, I got a feeling that… Noob was watching us the whole time.” That stick man with the Pac-Man mouth wrapped his legs with his jaw resting between them. He looked at the many stars. They’re sparkly, but that didn’t override those feelings.

“Hm?” The shaded one looked upon the sky. Sparkly indeed, but those words from his brother got him thinking, “Yeah, I think I felt the same, especially in that red space. That one Marker was kinda watching us also.” He also thought every Marker might be watching them, but chose not to talk about it.

Michael sighed, “Jesus, what a shitty adventure… We haven’t taken any showers since this afternoon… ”

Cary shifted his eyes to the ‘bathrooms’ briefly while he put his phone down the floor. He sniffed. “Ewgh! Yeah… There isn’t a bathroom anymore here.” Yep, guess the twins stank now, but it didn’t matter. Michael came up with an idea, “Wait… We should build a bathroom for both of us!”

“I… don’t think it’s time,” Cary objected. “We should just go take a shower, if we get back to our home tomorrow,” he suggested.

“Yeah-yeah, true,” Michael nodded.

Despite that rotten smell, the twins continued to observe the glitter stars in the sky without any care of those dangerous Markers. One star stood out big with three smaller ones surrounding it. Combined with the navy blue, the night seemed more peaceful here.

“They’re so pretty…” Michael whispered.

With that sky they definitely have seen it before on the screens, it’s now on their eyes. Maybe Cary can take a picture of that. “Yeah… Maybe it’s the perfect time to take a picture of this with us.”

“Do it.”

Cary walked up in front of the ‘bathroom,’ holding his phone in his left hand. Between the two doors, he placed it with the wall as the stand for that phone, with the screen facing his face. He unlocked it and pressed the camera icon below. There, the screen mirrored him and his brother taking the form of drawn stick men. That’s the front camera active. He set the timer to ten seconds for the preparation of a shoot.

He pressed the white circle below the mirror, and he sprinted away to his brother. They both tried to pose in time before the capture. Michael felt giddy tonight; he smiled and pointed his finger to Cary, who held the end of his belt, mouth open and bent legs.

The screen went to ‘1’ and blinked with that shot saved to the digital gallery. The twins stopped posing with Cary going back to hold his phone. He opened the Photos app. A new photo showed up at the bottom among the older ones. He pressed it.

The essence of this picture was unreal, like it was drawn! Michael’s face here looked silly, and Cary’s face had his mouth open beyond his head. This felt like an art collaboration?

Michael came in and looked at that photo. “Oh my pencil, I look like I’m about to eat the stars,” he giggled. Cary got infected by that giggle. “This is so funny… think I’m gonna post this on Twitter,” he said.

Cary closed the Photos app and opened Twitter. Provoking and mundane tweets flooded his timeline page, not usual even. Whatever.

He ignored it. He made a new tweet under his personal account with that picture he captured earlier. For the caption, he typed it as he deadpanned along,

We’re actually in the BFDI world!!! Unfortunately, we have to get back by tomorrow for reasons.

Tweet. Based on what he saw on the timeline, Cary didn’t hope much for the interaction with that tweet. Noob might’ve done something to turn his followers against him and his brother… His brain felt too dull to check on that.

He turned off his phone and talked to him, “There we go.”

Cary headed at his brother. “So, what are we gonna do tomorrow?” he asked.

“You call Noob again tomorrow and tell them to send us back, and, if that doesn’t work… uh… we either find the other way, or stay here as long as we can… until they can cooperate," Michael told him. They’re not certain of what would happen in the future, but there had got to be another way to go back to where they belonged; for example, drawing?

“Alright, we’ll see,” Cary replied.

He yawned in front of his brother, but covered his mouth with his left hand half way through. He wiped his eyelids while sighed, “Whoops. Sorry about that…”

“It’s fine… Right, it’s best to go to sleep now,” Michael suggested. He too needed sleep, maybe heavier than his brother Cary.

“Let’s go– Wait.” Before Cary walked ahead, the thought of the hotel rooms here being full interrupted his speech. He assumed, “All the rooms in this hotel may be full right now, because people are sleeping here.” “Oh.”

Cary suggested, ”How about we build a bunk bed, and sleep here instead?”

Michael hesitated, but approved, “If you want, sure.”

The twins went back to the middle of the rooffloor. Michael built the structure of a ‘wooden’ bunk bed with his line and lasso tool. Cary tossed the sides of that structure brown and green with his paint bucket. He then drew two gray and white mattresses, pillows and blankets with one on the top, and one on the bottom.

Ah yes, a normal-looking bunk bed, perfect for sleeping in this breezing night tonight.

“Yay,” Cary said. The twins smiled looking at it. Now, they decided where they would sleep there.

“Now, I’m gonna sleep at the top, and you sleep at the bottom,” Cary offered.

Michael took it. “Okay, thank you.”

The twins readied themselves to sleep. Michael got rid of his belt from his waist and stored it under his mattress, while Cary climbed to his bed and hung his folded from the side. They tucked themselves under their blankets, lounging down on their beds.

“Good night,” they mumbled to each other.

That rough feeling stayed in their mind after they closed their eyes, not very long before they fell into slumber.