Chapter Text
“Can you build something like this?”
It’s a blueprint, slapped right down on his workbench on top of a delicate redstone repeater he was attempting to wire. Now, Impulse knows that Cleo has an eye for detail herself, being an accomplished sculptor with her armor stand work, but she also had little by way of patience, especially when she wanted something. So when she barged her way into his semi-hidden base, he had let her. It’s not like she was Red.
Yet.
Nonetheless, Impulse sighs. He’d have to hope that the circuits weren’t completely ruined by Cleo’s impatience. He takes a quick look at the blueprint, his eyebrows practically soaring up into his hairline.
“Cleo, this is a lag machine—”
A 2b2t lag machine to be exact. Big enough Impulse would wager it could give people temporary immunity if they stood close enough to the base. Big enough to lag a few server chunks, make it hard to walk, lag out certain server functions.
Why would she want this? Even if he did build something like this, it wouldn’t make her life any easier. The immunity it might provide was far outweighed by the lag it would put out—and she wouldn’t be immune to that.
“I’m well aware,” she says, arms crossed, “so can you build it or not?”
“I mean, of course I can build it, I just want to know why—”
Cleo lets out an exasperated sigh of her own, her jaw set. She looks this way and that, as if she’s checking to make sure something isn’t in the room with them. Someone, more likely. The longer the Life server kept them, the worse their sense of trust got. The endless cycle starts to wear on a player after a while.
“Look, you’ve already shown the blueprint to me, so you must trust me a little—”
“It’s not that I don’t trust you, Impulse,” Cleo interrupts, “I don’t trust your walls.”
Impulse sits back in his rough-hewn chair, an old splinter that was never sanded down biting into his shoulder. “Yeah, I get that.”
She had spied on them during Double Life, her and Scott together. Listening to him and his fellow Reds’ paranoid murmurings about who to watch out for. He could only imagine the smirk that had pulled across her chapped lips upon hearing Etho say her name amongst the list of people they should watch out for.
She’s not smiling now. She looks tired, and that was saying something. Cleo was a zombie after all, she didn’t ever exactly appear to be in the picture of health. But the stress of the Life server was beginning to grate even on her; with bags under her eyes and a growing collection of untended wounds, a few staples on the hole in her side coming loose or popping off completely.
“We’re partially underground,” Impulse says, trying to reassure her, “And I’m on good terms with Grian, he doesn’t bother me much—”
“I don’t care about that,” Cleo snaps, “I don’t care how much Grian likes you this time around, because he ‘likes’ Pearl too, and that didn’t stop him from tossing her into the Deep Dark for funsies.”
“Well you showed this to me,” Impulse reiterates, dropping his voice to a whisper, “What’s going on, Cleo?”
Cleo sighs again, leaning in closer as she drops her voice to a whisper too. He’s whittled her down, if only a little bit. “What if I told you there might be a way out.”
“Of where?”
“The Life server!” she whispers, staring at him like it was obvious, “Where else?”
“Sorry—but how?”
“That’s where you come in,” she explains, “We need someone to build and maintain a lag machine. If it’s big enough it will delay the tick damage you get from going outside of the world border.”
“And why are we escaping the world border?” Impulse asks as intrigue fills him. A way out? He honestly never dreamed of it. After the third time he sort of accepted it as possibly being permanent, some kind of fresh hell they had all been trapped in by accident.
“Because the world portal is a little ways beyond it.” Cleo says, “I saw it. Etho saw it. If we can light it, we can escape.”
“Okay, so the lag machine will delay the damage we’d normally receive from stepping outside of the border, but theoretically there’s still a chance of death. It can’t negate all of the damage. How will we get to it?”
“Etho has a theory. If we light it, it might just freak the whole server out and buy us enough time to run for it. He’s the one who's friends with Doc, he’d know more about it than me. He’s the one who's going to light it.” She shrugs.
“And how will Etho get there?”
“Regen potions.” Cleo replies smoothly, “We’ve thought this through, Impulse.”
“Then why can’t he just build the lag machine himself, if you’ve all thought this through?” Impulse asks.
Cleo looks away. “Because we need someone to watch the machine.”
Of course. Lag machines were fickle. Simple to put together, it was just one circuit repeated over and over, stacked on top of each other so many times, sometimes so high they looked like skyscrapers. He’d heard tales from 2b2t of lag machines so big that they looked like palaces from far away. But the size was what really did them in. If one of the circuits broke, it ran the risk of breaking the whole machine.
“... I’ll think about it,” Impulse says.
“No, you decide now.” Cleo says. Nice of her to drop that ultimatum on him after telling him about her meticulous plan to try and break free of the server.
“And if I say no you’ll kill me?” He guesses.
“Hunt you down until you’re Red and permakill you.” She says without an ounce of emotion in her voice. Her mind is set, and Impulse doesn’t blame her. She’s just handed him the equivalent of sugarcane.
Impulse sighs, “What other choice do I have, then?”
“Awesome.” Cleo says, uncrossing her arms, “I’ll bring everyone else by later and we can talk about this more in-depth. Tell anyone and I’ll take you out of this cycle.”
He doesn’t bother promising to her that he wouldn’t tell a soul. Promises mean nothing on the Life server anyway.
-
Cleo comes back two days later with Etho and… Lizzie, of all people. Etho he could understand, Lizzie was a mystery.
When she was introduced in Last Life a few cycles ago, she seemed to thrive. Impulse recalled a large crop of mushrooms spontaneously sprouting in the middle of the dark oak forest, and the way people naturally flocked to her. But that’s what the fae were like, he supposes; magnetic, with a penchant for chaos. The last time he had seen her she was Red, and so were her teeth, sharp and shiny as she and her husband laughed, chasing some poor Green around the map with axes.
She doesn’t look so good this cycle.
Her space buns had long fallen out and she never bothered to put them back up. Her wings were tattered; the cracked transparent, gossamer scales catching the light oddly with so much as a flutter or slight movement.
Etho looks just as beaten down. Gone was most of the sleek techwear—the only thing reminiscent of it being his patchy army green flak jacket and his lace-up boots. His redstone eye was dull—to conserve power or because it was finally broken, Impulse didn’t know. He doubted Etho would tell him either way.
“So, Impulse,” Etho says, a familiar glint of amusement in his eye, “I hear you’re helping us out.”
Impulse, thankful for the bit of levity, latches onto it like a lifeline. He gives his friend and fellow hermit a smile. “Of course, a bit of a tall order, but nothing I can’t handle.”
Honestly, a lag machine had nothing on the factory he attempted to build on Season Eight.
He could practically see Etho’s smile beaming through the mask. “Good!”
“So, is this everyone?” Impulse asks, getting up from his chair. Just Cleo, Etho, Lizzie, and now him. Against Grian, the server admin, and whoever else he might have recruited to his side this cycle. He’s heard Scar was following him around again, but it might just be for another scam he’s come up with.
Maybe Martyn. Martyn wasn’t all he seemed to be. Impulse has been around long enough to be able to tell when someone starts to blur around the edges. Not like Lizzie—he wasn’t a fae. He was more like Etho; old, and not entirely player.
“Yes,” Cleo confirms, “this is everyone.”
Fuck. “Cleo—the lag machine has to be huge. Eventually it’ll get too large to hide, no matter whether it’s above or below ground, three people cannot defend the entire thing.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Cleo hisses, then she sighs. “We’ve still got to gather supplies. You said this thing needs to be huge, right? It’s going to take a lot of materials. I’m going to bring more people in, it’s not going to be just us defending the whole damn thing.”
“I told you we could get Joel—” Lizzie says all of a sudden, calling attention to her presence.
“And I told you Joel is too much of a wild card.” Cleo counters.
“He wants out just as much as we do,” Lizzie insists, crossing her arms. “He does. He’s not stupid. He knows we can’t keep doing this forever.”
No one tries to argue with her. It would be pointless to try anyway.
“So for the machine we’ll need slime, redstone, pistons, repeaters… iron…” so much iron. More iron than the chunks they were trapped in probably contained. He would need to make an iron farm and lie about its purpose, not that it would be hard. Dying multiple times often left one with a want for shiny new armor in spades, preferably the robust kind, rather than leather or chainmail.
And slime! So much slime! “Is there a slime chunk?”
“You think so little of me.” Etho says, thrusting a roughly-sketched map into his hands. “Slime chunk is a couple ticks left of Tango’s, about thirty blocks down.”
Tango. Impulse wants to scream. He was still obsessed with the Warden and Impulse was willing to bet he has one trapped and name-tagged somewhere near his property, and if he didn't, the skulk he’s laid around the area will summon it.
“Alright,” he murmurs, “the redstone—”
“I can always dismantle some stuff to chip in,” Etho replies smoothly. “Or all of it. I won’t need the stasis chamber after this is all over anyways, and if it doesn’t work out… there’s always next time.”
That was Etho. Always casual when faced with his demise. Even the Warden had barely phased him, right up until it was almost on top of him.
Impulse sighs, “Alright. Is Tango Red?”
All three of them look at each other. He’s missed out on a lot, here in his little hole in the mangrove swamp. He knows he has. He was just tired of the cycle.
“... Yes.” Cleo answers. “He finally went Red a little while ago.”
Well double fuck. “Okay. Alright. Awesome.”
-
This cycle was a weird one. It was a bit like Last Life, where everyone is randomly assigned a certain number of lives, however, it came with a twist. This time around, they can’t see how many lives they had left, they just went Red. So far, Lizzie has died three times, Cleo has died once, and Etho hasn’t died at all.
Neither has Impulse.
All of them were Green. There was no Yellow this time around, no warning to let them know they were teetering on the edge of the abyss. Instead, they would unceremoniously be dropped into the deep end of the pool, No warning, or preamble. Just hold your breath and pray you have more than two lives.
Pretty scary stuff, if Impulse thought about it for too long.
So he doesn’t. He just puts his head down and focuses on digging out the space for his iron farm. He has a villager he’s been hiding down here for a few weeks. He could make due with one. The farm wouldn’t be as efficient, but it would work. That’s all he cared about at this point.
He’s not sure what they’re aiming for, time-wise. It would take awhile to gather supplies, Cleo had acknowledged that. But if they took too long the number of people active on the server would slowly whittle down. They had started with more people this time; Skizz, Mumbo, and Lizzie returning after a brief absence in the Void. But more people does not a long cycle make.
Something has to give eventually. The cycle never stays quiet forever, not with the first Reds finally showing up. It was only a matter of time.
Jimmy goes Red.
He finished the iron farm that day.
-
Pearl joins them.
She keeps her hood up near constantly now, her fluffy antenna poking out at odd angles. Her wings are trimmed short, not torn like Lizzie’s, because Lizzie couldn’t fly with her wings anyways. Pearl’s were trimmed, a bit like Grian’s, to keep her from flying. The server wouldn’t allow anyone to fly. Not even its admin. Even he is at its mercy.
She’s died twice already and she’s a little afraid she’s about to go Red. Impulse doesn’t blame her. She admits she’s tired, and offers up all of her resources.
“Slimes will just keep spawning in the slime farm,” Etho says, “And the iron farm will generate all the iron we need. What we’re really limited by is how much redstone we can gather…”
“We need cobble too,” Impulse notes, “I can build one later.”
“I think we should build the farms as far from each other as possible,” Cleo says, “Putting all of our resources in one place puts us in danger. What if someone raids one of us for supplies?”
“Making it look like we aren’t working together too closely. Smart.” Pearl notes.
“I’ll build it,” Etho says, “Me and Bdubs worked on the slime farm together, so I can probably build a cobblestone generator without much suspicion.”
“I suppose I’ll do some mining, then,” Lizzie surmises, “and see if Joel has anything useful.”
“You sure he won’t mind?” Pearl asks.
Lizzie smiles, “He hasn’t said anything yet.”
“You’ve been stealing from Joel?” Pearl sounds aghast, but not at the fact that Lizzie was stealing. They all steal at some point. It was who Lizzie was stealing from.
“Oh please, we’re married! It’s not like he’ll kill me!”
“He killed you in Last Life.”
Lizzie frowns. “That was different, he had the Boogeyman Curse.”
“He still killed you—“
“Okay—“ Cleo interrupts before it could turn into an argument, “It’s fine. Just be careful, Lizzie, okay?”
Both women looked away from each other. Lizzie crossed her arms, her Green gaze fixed towards the ground.
“I will.”
-
Joel goes Red a day later. He gets so angry he chases Grian halfway across the map before Tango’s name-tagged Warden apparently ‘popped out of nowhere’ and scares him back to his own hidey-hole.
Lizzie brings him to their next meeting. It takes a bit of convincing before Cleo lets him in, with more than a few references back to the cycle that started it all—Third Life—and how she trusted Bdubs, who had gone Red to protect her.
She relents to both his and Lizzie’s pleading, mostly because she has bigger things to worry about. Like getting blaze rods, nether wart and ghast tears.
“The nether wart is probably the easiest thing to get,” Cleo says, “the blaze rods are harder, and the ghast tears are going to be the biggest pain—”
“Mumbo has a ghast farm,” Joel says, “I saw it! We could probably sneak over—”
“We could cut a deal with him,” Pearl offers, “Mumbo isn’t unreasonable.”
Joel scoffs at that. “Cut a deal? He’s not Scar, have you forgotten where you are, Pearl?”
Pearl lets out a sigh. “No, I haven’t, but Mumbo is still Green. He’d probably like to avoid conflict to keep it that way.”
“We can try talking to Mumbo, sure. With more people going Red, someone trying to be prepared won’t be weird.” Cleo says in agreement.
“I’ll talk to him,” Pearl says, “I… think he still trusts me, so it won’t be too big of an ask from him.”
Cleo nods, “Good. Anything else?”
“Cobblestone generator is up,” Etho reports, “so I can start bringing it over whenever. Same goes for the slime farm, though Bdubs keeps taking slime from it as well and I’m… not actually sure what he’s using it for, to be honest.”
He punctuates his statement with a laugh, reaching back to rub the back of his neck.
“It’s fine,” Cleo says, “it doesn’t matter.” Not in the long run.
-
“I know what you’re up to.”
It feels like Etho’s been dumped in ice water.
He went to collect some slime from the slime farm, zoning out for an hour or so as he molded the slime into blocks for easier transport. He had hardly even registered Bdubs entering, assuming he had simply come to get some slime too.
Bdubs is just as worn down as the rest of them. He has a split lip and busted eye that refuses to heal. All of his moss and foliage had died, save for a few errant blades of grass in his hair, held out of his face by a threadbare red headband.
He has his arms crossed, his green gaze pinned on Etho. Pins him to the spot.
Traps him in this room.
Etho tries to play it cool. He lets out a laugh. “Ooh, you caught me! I was making all this slime into blocks!”
“That’s not what I mean, Etho,” Bdubs practically growls, oddly serious for once. “I know what you and Cleo and Impulse are up to.”
The smile practically melts off of Etho’s face. “... What do you want?”
“Is it gonna work?” Bdubs asks, “You’re absolutely sure?”
“In theory,” Etho divulges, “It works in theory.”
Bdubs seems to consider this. Etho watches it play across his face, the doubt, the fear. The intrigue.
The hope.
Bdubs sucks his teeth. “Is there anything I can do?”
“You got any redstone?” Etho asks, perhaps a little too quickly. They were the most limited by how much redstone they would have in the end. He could make due without the regen potions, that’s what the lag machine was for—to slow down tick damage—and if that failed he was prepared.
“Yeah, but not much.” Bdubs says, “I’ll contribute whatever I can, though.”
At this, Etho smiles. “You sure you’re gonna be able to keep a secret this big, buddy?”
“Pshh secret shmecret! Of course I can keep this a secret!” Bdubs proclaims, loudly, in a display so utterly him that Etho could almost forget that they’ve been trapped in a never-ending death game for who knows how long.
“Okay, okay!” He chuckles, “keep it down! We don’t know who all is on our side.”
“I knew that.”
“Suuure you did. Glad to have you on our side, Bdubs.”