Chapter Text
The projector whirred.
Theo leaned on the balls of his feet, eyes glued to the blank screen. “Man,” he said, voice casual, “what do we even call the bot?”
Manepear shrugged, his brows pulling together under his blindfold until his forehead got those little creases. He chewed on the inside of his cheek for a second, as if the right name might be hiding in there, and then offered with complete sincerity, “I don’t know, bro… um, Wifies’ bot?”
Theo squinted before blinking rapidly behind his sunglasses. “Yeah bro. Ain’t no way I’m calling it that.” He gestured vaguely at the silent projector. “That’s not catchy.”
Egg tilted his head just a fraction, unimpressed in a way that managed to feel judgmental without him saying anything yet. “Bruh.”
Theo, unfortunately, powered through. “Botfies?” he tried, and the second the word left his mouth you could tell even he didn’t believe in it, so he immediately threw another one out. “Robofies?”
Spoke turned his head slowly. “Dude,” he said, flat and tired, “did you get dropped as a kid?”
Theo gasped, sharp, clutching his chest like Spoke had just landed a crit hit. He pointed a trembling finger, and his sunglasses slipped down a little from the motion. “That’s crazy,” he accused. “That’s actually crazy, coming from you.”
Spoke covered his mouth with a hand, eyes wide as if he couldn’t believe the audacity of being reverse-insulted. “What the hell does that mean?!” he sputtered.
Wemmbu, who had been laying on the ground with his head resting on Egg’s legs, did not even look away from the blank screen. “He’s right, though,” he added.
Theo pointed at him immediately, triumphant. “See? Wemmbu gets it.”
Wemmbu blinked, purple irises sliding off the screen and locking directly onto Theo. “I didn’t say I liked it,” he clarified. “I said that you’re stupid.”
Theo waved that off with a grin. “Semantics, dude. It’s all semantics.”
Parrot finally spoke, and the way he said it made it obvious he’d been holding himself together with spite. “Can we not do this right now?” he asked, quiet and tense.
Egg’s voice softened just a hair, but the judgment was still there. “No, no, no. I’m with Parrot. If you name it, it’s gonna get stronger.”
Theo scoffed, throwing his hands up. “Bro, what is this? He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named?” He leaned forward, incredulous. “That’s not how bots work, bro. It probably doesn’t care what we call it.”
Egg just stared at him.
It was a long stare, the kind that made Theo feel like his brain was an optional feature he didn’t install, and the celestial’s silence managed to say more than any rant ever could. “Bro,” Egg finally said, voice low and devastating, “it literally put us in a courtroom.”
Wemmbu’s mouth twitched and he elbowed Egg’s side. “Yo,” he said, “call it the Judge.”
Mapicc shook his head immediately, crossing his arms into an X so aggressive it looked as if he was trying to cancel the idea in real time. “Hell nah. That’s cringe.”
Parrot stared at them like he couldn’t believe this was his life. “Are you for real?”
Theo brightened. “I mean, the Judge is kinda fire though.”
Flame cut in, eyes wide, voice sharp with exhausted disbelief. “Dude. Oh my god, bro. Please stop yapping.”
The room shut up for half a beat on instinct.
Then Theo whispered anyway. “Okay but like… if it’s analyzing Parrot now, should we call it ‘Parrot’s Cancel Thread’?”
Parrot’s head turned slowly toward him.
Theo met his eyes and immediately lifted both hands like he was being arrested by common sense. “I’m joking. I’m joking. I’m coping. My bad bro.”
Egg sighed, the sound long and exhausted. “Nah… Bro’s coping out loud.”
Flame didn’t even look away from the screen, but his mouth twitched into a strained smile. “Like, bro. Just call it ‘Wifies’ so you can like blame it on the player who made it, bro.”
Spoke muttered, deadpan and practical in the way that made it clear he’d already accepted their doom. “Yeah, so when it ruins our lives we can be like ‘Wifies did it.’”
Mapicc leaned in. “Wifies is about to drop the most diabolical exposé.”
Theo nodded solemnly, clasping his hands together like he was about to deliver a eulogy for Parrot’s reputation. “Wifies is about to upload ‘The Truth About ParrotX2’ with the red arrow on the thumbnail.”
A sharp, strained breath hissed out of Parrot’s nose, and he pinched the bridge between his eyes. He was trying to compress his own headache into something more manageable. “Oh my god,” he exhaled, wearing a smile that looked more like a wound than an expression. “I’m actually trapped in a room full of kids.”
Theo, as if personally offended by the idea that the room itself might be allowed to remain neutral, pointed an accusing finger at the opposite wall, where the stone sat bare and uncaring, slick with cold. “At least it could give us chairs! Or, I don’t know, a slab with a fence on it or something! We have rights!”
The projector’s whirr deepened again, low and heavy, as if it had heard him, understood him, and decided it hated him.
Theo’s pointing finger froze midair.
“Oh shit,” he said softly.
ParrotX2’s base loaded in. Parrot walked in like it was a normal day. Wemmbu was standing inside.
“Oh, it’s starting.” Spoke made a small, pained noise in the back of his throat. “I already hate this.”
Egg’s one eye narrowed as he cut a glance sideways at the real Wemmbu who was now sitting beside him. “Hell nah. Why are you just in his house?”
Wemmbu didn’t even flinch. “It’s not my fault his door was unlocked,” he said, and it sounded exactly like a lie.
The real Parrot muttered through his teeth, voice tight. “I remember this.”
On screen, Parrot stopped short, because Wemmbu stood motionless in the middle of the room. Wemmbu said he had something greatly interesting.
In the room, Manepear let out a low groan. “Bro talks like a Disney villain from 2013.”
On screen, Past-Parrot hesitated, and it wasn’t subtle either, but he eventually followed him out because curiosity had always been Parrot’s fatal flaw. The scene cut to them arriving at the edge of a massive, ragged crater in a plains biome.
Egg went quiet. “Bro,” he said finally, voice hushed, “even though I know who did it, if I logged in and a dude I barely tolerated showed me that, I’d also think that is not normal.”
Beside him, Parrot’s feathers ruffled slightly, an involuntary reaction. “Yeah, bro,” he murmured, almost to himself. “That’s why I believed him at first.”
On screen, Past-Wemmbu claimed he wasn’t responsible.
Spoke barked out a single sharp laugh. “Bro. You are such a liar.”
The present-day Wemmbu merely blinked, his expression utterly unbothered. “And?”
Egg turned his head slowly toward him, eye wide with disbelief. “Bro. That is not helping your case.”
Wemmbu shrugged, small and careless. “My case is fine.”
“Your case is in jail,” Theo muttered under his breath, and Manepear made a noise that might’ve been a laugh if the situation wasn’t actively traumatic.
Past-Wemmbu called it a test site for an orbital cannon. A weapon that could destroy any location at a whim.
Theo shifted in his seat. The words felt like they were physically crawling under his skin. “Ugh,” he groaned, rubbing a hand over his face. “Don’t remind me.”
On screen, they started putting the pieces together. They landed on SpokeIsHere as the likely owner, because Spoke had been hovering around Wemmbu’s redstone nonsense forever, and they’d both seen the cannon concept before, and Spoke was basically the only person on the server with the particular disease of mind that made him look at an idea that insane and immediately think, I wonder if I can make it worse, but even with all that, they still didn’t understand why he would do it,
In the viewing room, Spoke jabbed a furious finger at the projected image of Past-Wemmbu like he was trying to stab the pixels. “Oh my god,” he snapped, and his voice cracked with the kind of betrayal that only happens when your somewhat friend but also enemy frames you for something you absolutely would do, just not today. “You are my number one opp, Wemmbu. Why are you blaming your stupid crater on me?”
Egg tilted his head, one visible eye narrowing as he let the thought roll around like he was tasting it. “To be fair…” he began, drawing the words out in that slow, careful tone that always meant he was about to say something criminal.
Spoke’s head snapped toward him like a whip. “You too?”
Egg shrugged, a helpless little gesture that somehow made it worse. “It does track, man. I mean, you have a proven history of seeing a bad idea and immediately touching it.”
Mapicc made a tiny sound that might’ve been a laugh, immediately choked it back when Spoke looked at him, and then tried to recover with the world’s weakest defense. “He’s not wrong, bro.”
They decided to check the Wonders. Past-Parrot didn’t know who built them or why, but he assumed they’d be the only builds worthy of being targeted.
Parrot nodded once, watching his past self like it was someone else. “And now I do know,” he said quietly.
The footage showed him angling toward spawn, cautious but committed.
In the viewing room, Manepear’s brows lifted. “So you just assumed the Wonders were the target.”
Parrot didn’t look away from the screen. His voice stayed soft, almost embarrassed by how reasonable it had seemed at the time. “I mean. They were the biggest thing on the server. If you were testing an orbital cannon, you’d point it at the biggest target. It seemed reasonable to me.”
Manepear nodded slowly, like he hated agreeing with Parrot but hated lying more. “Yeah,” he conceded. “That’s actually reasonable.”
The footage showed Past-Parrot and Past-Wemmbu back at Parrot’s base. They’d barely begun to strategize when Roshambogames’s avatar burst through the door, his character practically vibrating with panic, and he blurted it out in pieces because his brain was running faster than his mouth, the server was lagging, badly, and the Wonder he’d been tasked with guarding was just gone.
The footage cut hard to the site. Where the grand, intricate monument had once stood, there was now a massive, perfectly circular crater.
Egg sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth. “Oh, that’s ugly.”
On screen, Wemmbu confirmed that it was an orbital cannon. No doubt. Then he started explaining what that meant. But on screen, Past-Parrot wasn’t reading it anymore. His gaze had drifted, panning slowly down, into the raw, exposed earth beneath the crater. There, nestled in the jagged stone like a wound, was a small, crude room built of netherrack sitting in the middle of a catastrophe like it belonged there.
Spoke let out a soft gasp, more reverent than he meant it to be. “You found it. The stash.”
Parrot in the viewing room went rigid, his fingers tightening. “Yeah,” he said, his voice tight.
Past-Parrot hovered there, staring at the exposed netherrack room, for several long seconds longer than the moment required. A realization forming slowly. If no one else was going to stop the Wonders from being destroyed… then someone had to.
“I’m glad that you wanted to save the Wonders, at least,” Spoke said quietly, breaking the tense silence in the room. “Even though you didn’t know I was nuking them to hide my evidence.”
Parrot gave a half-shrug without looking away, eyes still glued to his past self’s moment of decision. “They were part of the server’s skyline ever since I joined,” he said, and there was something faintly embarrassed in the admission. “I guess I was pretty sentimental about them.”
On screen, Past-Parrot voiced it plainly. If he was going to protect the Wonders, he’d need an orbital cannon of his own. Wemmbu, of course, had the schematics. Parrot admitted he didn’t know the first thing about building one, so he did what he always did and started small.
Flame shook his head slowly, disbelief written all over his face like it was trying to escape. “Dude,” he breathed out, “what is this thinking. Yeah, I’ll just build an orbital cannon to stop the other guy’s orbital cannon. Like, excuse me, bro?”
Parrot gave another weary, pragmatic shrug. “I was hoping the server lag from two simultaneous orbital strikes would just lead me to the location of Spoke’s cannon,” he said, and then paused like he realized he’d just said that out loud. “I guess.”
Egg elbowed Wemmbu in the ribs, a sharp grin spreading across his face. “Yo,” he chuckled, the sound darkly amused. “Is Einstein really dead?”
Wemmbu threw his head back and cackled, delighted in a way that should’ve been illegal. “Bro really thinks he’s Light Yagami with that thinking.”
The footage shifted to another Wonder. And there was Roshambo again. Past-Parrot asked him about the netherrack box beneath his Wonder. Roshambo said he’d never seen one.
Spoke let out a soft snort without taking his eyes off the screen. “I mean, yeah,” he muttered, almost to himself. “That was the whole point.”
The footage jumped back. Parrot hovered over the spot where his TNT machine used to be and stopped short. Obsidian covered the machine. Past-Parrot circled the build, then pulled out his communicator. The footage showed him calling Wemmbu over.
A collective groan rippled through the present-day audience like a wave of shared regret. Spoke buried his face in his hands. “Oh, no. No, no, no.”
Past-Wemmbu arrived, arms crossed, already unimpressed. He hovered around the half-rebuilt TNT rig while Past-Parrot tried to explain what he was attempting, words spilling out too fast, and Past-Wemmbu cut him off and said the machine wouldn’t do anything.
In the viewing room, Present-Wemmbu nodded along with himself, delighted at the opportunity to agree with his past self. “See?” he said, gesturing at the screen like he was presenting evidence in court. “Accurate. I was right then, I’m right now. It was a chungus idea.”
Egg shot him a look, flat and warning. “You haven’t even seen the next part yet.”
Wemmbu waved him off like Egg was being dramatic. “I remember this. He didn’t listen. Parrot never listens, bro.”
Parrot didn’t respond, but his feathers sat a little tighter against his body.
On screen, Past-Parrot hesitated, then flipped the switch anyway. Both of them rocketed into the air, caught mid-flight as the first blast rippled outward. The shockwave hadn’t even settled before the second detonation hit as the machine kept firing rounds of TNT.
In the viewing room, Theo yelped, half laugh and half prayer. “Oh, okay, no, that did something.”
Wemmbu, who had been ready with another ‘I-told-you-so,’ simply stared. His smug expression faltered, replaced by a blink of genuine, grudging surprise. His eyebrows lifted a fraction. “…Huh.”
Egg did not miss a beat, because Egg lived for moments like this the way some people lived for sunlight. He swiveled his head slowly toward Wemmbu, his voice dripping with mock sincerity. “I remember this, he said.” Egg grinned, teeth sharp. “That’s, like, minus ten aura right there.”
Wemmbu frowned.
Past-Parrot frantically broke blocks midair, scrambling just to stop the thing. The explosions finally sputtered out when he manually tore part of the machine apart, landing hard on scorched ground.
Theo smacked his lips together, letting out a low, appreciative whistle. “Nice. Cleanup on aisle ‘my entire reputation.’”
Manepear made a sound that was halfway between a groan and laughter. “Bro got launched by his own plan.”
On screen, Parrot rounded on Wemmbu immediately, clearly shaken. He complained, said he’d already had a cannon once, that it got destroyed, that something kept undoing his work. Past-Wemmbu laughed right in his face, that short, casual laugh that said Parrot was not worth taking seriously.
Present-Wemmbu did the same, a matching bark of amusement, as if the clip had given him permission. “Yeah, that checks.”
Egg blinked at him from the side,. “You’re awful. You were literally gaslighting him on main.”
Wemmbu shrugged. “He sounded ridiculous.”
Parrot’s head snapped slightly toward him, and then he looked away again like he didn’t want to give Wemmbu the satisfaction of a fight, but his posture went rigid all the same.
On screen, Wemmbu suggested that Parrot probably blew it up himself.
Parrot’s feathers bristled visibly in the present, puffing out. “I did not blow it up myself, bro.”
Theo muttered, “He sounded like he did though,” and then, when Parrot glanced at him, Theo immediately raised both hands. “I’m not saying you did, bro, I’m just saying it was self-inflicted.”
On screen, Past-Wemmbu left Parrot standing alone with the wrecked machine, and Past-Parrot just stared at the damage, clearly replaying the interaction, and you could see the questions turning over in his head like stones, why would Wemmbu cover for someone else, why would he downplay it if he knew how these machines worked, why would he act like it was nothing when it so clearly was something.
Wemmbu shifted in his seat, arms crossed. “Because I didn’t want him building one yet.”
Mapicc’s eyes snapped to him. “Yet?”
Wemmbu did not elaborate, which was the most Wemmbu thing he could possibly do.
The footage cut to Marshland Mansion. And on screen Parrot slowed mid-air as he spotted Wemmbu talking to Roshambo below, hovering just far enough away to listen.
Manepear leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Ohhh, here we go. This is where it starts getting nasty.”
Roshambo talked about needing about having nothing left. About how the others didn’t yet, but they would. Wemmbu reassured him and mentioned that Parrot was starting to notice and he was asking the wrong questions.
Egg sucked in a slow breath. “Oh wow.”
Wemmbu told Roshambo to stop destroying Parrot’s builds outright.
In the room, Parrot’s feathers lifted hard. “Bro,” he admitted, and the word came out thick in his throat, not a joke this time. “I felt so stupid. For weeks. Because I kept having these little accidents, and I thought I was just being paranoid. I thought maybe I actually sucked at redstone.”
Theo shifted like he wanted to say something comforting and then remembered comfort was not really one of his crafts.
On screen, Roshambo said something about trying to get the others on their side, and Wemmbu left after that, turning away like the conversation was complete. Parrot followed. The footage tracked him tailing Wemmbu. But a skeleton showed up, and Parrot peeled off to deal with it, and by the time the arrows stopped and the bones dropped, Wemmbu was gone.
In the viewing room, Manepear groaned, getting flashbacks. “Ugh, every time. It’s always the random mob.”
On screen, Past-Parrot arrived Wemmbu’s base at spawn. He called out. Once. Twice. Nothing. He waited a second longer than necessary. Then left.
Egg tilted his head, squinting at the screen. “Yo, is bro Batman?”
Wemmbu let out a sharp cackle. “He wished.”
“Oh yeah,” Spoke said, snapping his fingers as a memory surfaced with the worst possible timing. “You did have that whole batcave thing underneath your base, though. The hidden piston door in the ground.”
Wemmbu’s amused expression froze in place as if he was lagging, and he slowly turned his head toward Spoke with a quiet menacet. “Bro. What? How do you know about that? And don’t call it a batcave.”
“I might have…” Spoke looked away, studying the ceiling with sudden intensity. “…stumbled upon it with Mapicc. Once. Or twice. While you were offline. Maybe.”
Mapicc, who had been quietly observing up until now with the calm of a man uninvolved, blinked once, and his expression shifted from neutral into that dawning oh-no realization as he got dragged into the confession by name.
“Bro,” Wemmbu said flatly, and the flatness did more violence than volume ever could. “Get out of my house.”
“What do you mean, ‘get out’?” Spoke scoffed, gesturing vaguely at the projected footage. “Bro. It’s gone now. Spawn is literally unrecognizable post-… everything. It was probably griefed a long time ago. You’re homeless, man.”
Wemmbu stared at him for a beat. “That doesn’t make you less trespassing.”
Theo covered his mouth with his hand, eyes bright, because this was exactly the kind of side-argument he lived for, and Egg made a noise like he wanted to laugh but didn’t want to reward them.
Later, Parrot was still working on the orbital canon. Wemmbu eventually reappeared, watching Parrot’s latest build. Parrot started explaining, talking about power and precision. Wemmbu looked genuinely lost. He said he didn’t get what Parrot meant.
In the viewing room, Spoke blinked. “That’s wild, considering—”
“—Wemmbu literally knows how to build one,” Mapicc finished, his voice flat. “Yeah.”
On screen, Past-Parrot demonstrated on an iron golem. The machine fired. The golem dropped, but the server stuttered just for a moment with a sharp, unmistakable lag spike.
In the room, several people reacted at once.
“Oh,” Theo started, the sound half warning and half I hate this.
“Yup,” Manepear said, popping the ‘p.’ He didn’t need to elaborate. “Spoke’s cannon.”
“Yeah,” Spoke confirmed.
On screen, they flew back toward spawn. Parrot was visibly excited, but Past-Wemmbu didn’t match the energy at all, not even a little. He criticized it immediately, saying the lag mattered more than the kill.
In the viewing room, Parrot frowned, watching himself grin and then falter. “I got confused.”
On screen, Parrot insisted he’d tested it multiple times with no lag. Wemmbu paused.
In the present, Wemmbu leaned forward slightly, eyes narrowing on his own past self, “I knew that it wasn’t his machine causing the lag.”
Past-Wemmbu said exactly that before he took off without another word.
Parrot watched himself hesitate for half a second before following.
They arrived at The Crone, or what was left of it. The massive, intricate build was now a skeleton of itself.
The room went quiet.
“Aw, man,” Spoke muttered softly, almost to himself. “It’s worse looking at it from this angle. It's just… gone.”
Fantst was there, his avatar pacing, the movement jittery with panic, and he explained in a rush that a ball of TNT had just appeared out of nowhere mid-air and destroyed it, and the way he said out of nowhere was so desperate it sounded like he was pleading with the universe to believe him. Parrot asked him about the redstone machinery that had been buried beneath the build. Fantst swore he didn’t know anything about any redstone. Wemmbu suggested it might’ve been a cobblestone duper. Parrot pushed back immediately and said cobble dupers didn’t leave that kind of footprint.
In the room, Manepear pointed at the screen. “Okay, yeah. He’s right there. That’s a valid point.”
Past-Parrot asked what the plan was now, how they find who did this, how they stop it, and Past-Wemmbu didn’t answer, didn’t even pretend to answer, he just left again, peeling off into the sky.
“Ugh,” Theo groaned. “Not the Irish goodbye.”
Parrot’s feathers twitched, the annoyance threaded through the sadness. “That part sucked.”
After double-checking that Fantst really had no clue, Past-Parrot tried to follow Wemmbu again. He flew to Wemmbu’s base, saw the nametag vanish inside, and when Past-Parrot landed and entered, the place was empty.
In the viewing room, Theo sighed. “Classic.”
On screen, time had clearly passed, Parrot’s builds were cleaner now. Parrot called Wemmbu again.
In the room, Theo groaned preemptively, already sick of watching Parrot chase validation from a man who treated him like a hobby. “Why do you keep calling him, man?”
“l needed a second set of eyes, bro,” Parrot shot back. “I was actually going insane.”
On screen, Past-Parrot showed him the new cannon, and it looked different, with multiple buttons laid out in a neat grid, each one mapped to a specific firing direction. Wemmbu messed with it immediately, pressed buttons, and laughed when TNT shot cleanly across the sky.
Wemmbu gave a slow, appreciative nod. “Okay, yeah. That one was actually cool. The button mapping was kinda fire.”
Egg shot him a withering look. “You say that like you weren’t literally griefing him, like, two days earlier.”
Wemmbu blinked at him, all fake innocently. “Bro why are you such a hater right now?”
“Oh, my bad,” Egg deadpanned, shrugging. “I’ve been standing for, like, three hours. My feet are genuinely cooked.”
Wemmbu nodded solemnly. He was no Horace, but chairs were one of the easiest things to build in Minecraft, and somehow that fact made the situation funnier and worse at the same time. “Yeah. That makes sense. Yo, he’s your friend, why didn’t Wifies give us chairs, bro?”
Theo threw his hands up. “Dude, I’ve been saying!”
Parrot rubbed a hand over his face, voice muffled with exhaustion and disbelief. “Please, for the love of god, do not call the bot Wifies.”
Wemmbu asked why Parrot kept firing it over the ocean instead of land, and Parrot answered without hesitation that he wasn’t interested in destroying things, which was a sentence that would’ve landed better if he wasn’t literally standing next to a machine designed exclusively for destroying things, but Wemmbu didn’t even push the hypocrisy, just let it sit there like a decorative plant in a room full of weapons, and Parrot pivoted the conversation instead, he asked who built the Wonders. Wemmbu said he didn’t know. Parrot called him a liar.
In the viewing room, Manepear winced. “Oof. Straight to the throat.”
On screen, Past-Parrot didn’t soften it either, accusing Wemmbu of knowing more than he was saying, accusing him of playing dumb
Present-Wemmbu scoffed. “I wasn’t playing dumb.”
Parrot glanced at him in the viewing room, expression flat in a way that made it worse, because Parrot’s face was basically saying you’re right, you’re not playing.
On screen, Past-Parrot finally said it outright, that Wemmbu could build an orbital cannon, everyone knew it, and yet Wemmbu refused to help, said he wasn’t interested in helping Parrot build anything, and instead he only cared about finding Spoke’s cannon, and he refused to explain why.
Present-Parrot glanced over. “You just wanted the duped items.”
Wemmbu answered instantly without a hint of shame. “Yeah bro,” he said.
Parrot deadpanned, because this whole experience was just taking his long-held theory about people like Wemmbu and engraving it into stone. “Thank you for respecting my intelligence by just openly confessing to your crimes, dude. Really streamlines the process.”
Egg let out a quiet noise that might’ve been a laugh, and Theo’s shoulders shook like he was trying not to make it worse by enjoying it, which of course did not stop him from enjoying it.
On screen, Past-Wemmbu pressed again, impatient now, asking where Spoke was, and Past-Parrot said he didn’t know, but he did have notes on how to track Spoke’s cannon, and he’d stored them in the Frosted Palace.
Spoke stared at the screen, stunned. “…Why would you tell him that.”
Parrot looked at him, “I had a plan, trust the process.”
Spoke’s expression said the process had never earned trust in its life.
On screen, Past-Wemmbu left immediately, and with Wemmbu gone, Parrot made a choice and went back to Wemmbu’s base.
In the viewing room, Spoke squinted at the screen for a second, then his face cleared with sudden understanding that looked almost like relief until it turned into dread. “Oh, that’s what you meant.”
Manepear clutched the sides of his head. “I am so tense, bro. I might actually shit myself.”
Theo leaned toward him immediately, delighted. “That’s the spirit.”
Manepear shot him a look so severe it could’ve been weaponized. “Who even are you bro?”
Parrot searched longer this time, finding a hidden lever. He pulled it. A section of floor hissed open. He dropped down into a narrow stone passage. At the end: a 3×3 iron door with a button beside it. But Parrot hesitated to press it.
Egg’s voice dropped to a whisper, scandalized. “Why didn’t you press it. It was right there!”
On screen, Past-Parrot drifted closer, then pulled back.
Wemmbu glanced at Parrot, unreadable. “I would’ve known.”
Parrot shot back immediately, “That’s what I feared.”
Parrot turned away, flying back up through the tunnel, out of the base. The footage followed him returning to the last cannon he’d built, and when he arrived Wemmbu was already there, casually using it like it belonged to him, firing TNT into the ocean with the relaxed posture of someone skipping stones.
Spoke let out a small, pained laugh. “Of course he is,” he said. “Of course.”
Wemmbu noticed Parrot and immediately went on the offensive. Where had Parrot been, and asking where he’d been and why the notes weren’t in the monument, and Parrot apologized too fast, saying the notes were in his base and he’d gone to grab them. Wemmbu demanded them right then, right now, and Parrot, instead of handing them over, stalled, asking why Wemmbu wanted them anyway.
“Get with the program!” Wemmbu’s voice crackled with impatience in the room, like even the present-day version of him couldn’t sit through his own secrecy. “I want the items, bro. The shiny, glitchy, server-crashing items!”
Theo glanced over. “He doesn’t know about the items bro!” he shot back.
Wemmbu scoffed, folding his arms. “He already knew why. He’s just being difficult.”
Parrot’s voice sharpened. “No, I really didn’t.”
Past-Wemmbu claimed he “just” wanted to destroy Spoke’s cannon.
Spoke let out a soft, disbelieving snort and aimed it at the floor. “Sure,” he muttered. “Yeah. For the good of the server.”
Wemmbu shot him a look. "I don't think you have anything to say, Mr. 'Duped Items.'"
Spoke’s mouth opened and then closed again, because he did have something to say, he had a whole dissertation, but it was hard to defend yourself when the accusation was technically correct and also stupid.
They bickered. A lot.
Spoke leaned his head back against the cold wall. “It feels like watching your relatives argue in the kitchen at a family party,” he whispered.
Theo nodded hard. “While everyone else is in the living room like ‘are they okay?’”
Egg made a quiet noise that meant yes and also please stop.
Finally, Wemmbu asked how to find Spoke’s cannon. Parrot said they had to use the lag.
Parrot nodded along with his past self, jaw set. “Yeah. That was the plan. The only plan, really.”
On screen, Parrot explained that if you measure TNT velocity, track the timing, use the delay to calculate distance from the source. But, even if they destroyed Spoke’s orbital cannon, at best only two of the Wonders would still be standing.
Spoke shifted in his seat, a phantom itch between his shoulder blades. "The Wonders have been destroyed for years," he muttered, almost to himself. "And I'm still getting nervous watching this."
Mapicc’s voice softened, smaller than usual. “That’s rough, man.”
On screen, Past-Parrot swallowed, squared his shoulders, and told Wemmbu he was ready, ready to build an orbital cannon, and he asked for help.
Theo shot up straight in his seat, his eyes wide. "Oh no. Oh god, here we go again."
Spoke just buried his face deeper in his hands, voice muffled into his palms. “Parrot…”
Egg stared at the screen, expression caught between disbelief and pity. “That’s tragic, man,” he said quietly. “He’s just asking to get hurt.”
On screen, Past-Wemmbu questioned why Parrot even wanted to build one, and Past-Parrot said it was to blow up Spoke’s, and Wemmbu said it was a bad idea to blow up that location, not because it was wrong, but because it was inconvenient, but Parrot built an orbital cannon anyway.
Theo leaned forward. “Oh wow. He’s locked in.”
Wemmbu appeared mid-build and accused Parrot immediately, saying he didn’t know what he was doing. Parrot said he did know what he was doing. Wemmbu fired back, asking if Parrot had even found Spoke’s location yet? Parrot said no because that’s what he was waiting on.
Wemmbu pursed his lips. “Yeah bro… Look at that repeater timing. It’s giving me secondhand embarrassment.”
Past-Wemmbu circled the machine, criticizing small things. Parrot finally snapped back and asked why Wemmbu didn’t just build the cannon himself.
Spoke muttered, “Oh, that’s a loaded question.”
Wemmbu scoffed. Said he didn’t understand why Parrot was so obsessed with orbital cannons. Said Parrot was wasting time.
From his spot against the wall, where he’d been silent for so long he’d almost become part of the scenery, Flame finally spoke again. “Yeah. That’s a control thing.”
Wemmbu turned slowly toward Flame’s general direction, eyes narrowing like he was trying to decide whether to be offended or impressed. “You’ve been quiet.”
Flame shrugged, the motion barely perceptible. “I mean. It’s nothing new to see, bro. You always get weird when someone else starts building the bigger stick, dude,” and his mouth twitched into something that wasn’t quite a smile, “it bruises the ego.”
Wemmbu stared at him for a beat. He looked almost grudging. “You know you’re not wrong.” Then, after a pause that sounded like teeth grinding, “And I hate that.”
Parrot didn’t back down and said it wasn’t a waste of time if the machine worked. Wemmbu paused at that, then claimed that the cannon would blow itself up the moment it was activated, before proving it. The cannon detonated itself.
“Oh come on,” Theo barked. “That’s sabotage.”
Wemmbu brushed it off and told Parrot that Parrot didn’t understand anything that was going on.
“Yeah no shit because you’re manipulating him!” Theo shouted, and the outburst cracked through the room.
Parrot said Wemmbu used to guard a Wonder. Wemmbu answered without hesitation, like he’d been waiting for someone to bring it up, yeah, he did, until that Wonder got destroyed, and Parrot asked why he didn’t care.
In the viewing room, Mapicc winced. “Oh, that’s a dangerous ask.”
Wemmbu explained it like it was obvious, like Parrot was being stupid. Just because he guarded it didn’t mean he cared.
Present-Wemmbu shrugged along with the screen.. “I just wanted the items, to be honest.”
On screen, Parrot pushed back, voice tighter now, saying destroying Spoke’s cannon was the only way to stop the rest of the Wonders from being erased, that he didn’t understand why Wemmbu wouldn’t want that, and Wemmbu fired right back, turning the question around, saying he didn’t understand why Parrot cared so much. Parrot always answered anyway, saying he cared because nobody else was doing anything.
In the viewing room, Parrot’s voice went quiet but steady. “And I still think so.”
Wemmbu stared at him, and the stare lasted long enough to feel like he was genuinely trying to comprehend it. Then he let out a short, sharp bark of laughter. “That is the worst thinking I have ever heard."
“Probably,” Parrot agreed, without a hint of irony. “But my conscience will have a lovely view.”
Wemmbu’s amusement thinned into something more brittle, and he said he used to care, right up until everything important in his monument got nuked.
“Come on, y’all. I just wanted the goods,” Wemmbu said, with the reverence of a true connoisseur. “The glowy, very-much-not-blown-up goods.”
Past-Parrot reminded him that at the beginning, Wemmbu himself had said the Wonders were pointless. Wemmbu didn’t hesitate and said they were.
In the room, Manepear winced. “Oh that’s cold.”
Flame, half-leaning against the wall scrolling on his communicator, didn’t look up. “Yeah. Someone already buried that sentiment.”
Manepear glanced over. “Emotionally?”
Flame shrugged, still not looking up. “Everything-ally, bro.”
Past-Parrot didn’t argue anymore and left. Wemmbu followed, and they regrouped at another Wonder. Parrot gave him one last chance to spill, but Wemmbu said he didn’t know what he was talking about.
In the room, Spoke muttered, “That’s cap,” and Mapicc nodded like he was stamping it with official paperwork.
Past-Parrot stated it flatly, that there was something beneath every monument, and if no one else was going to admit it then he’d dig straight down into this one, and he hadn’t even broken the first block before a mass of TNT appeared out of nowhere. The Wonder vanished in fire and sound.
In the room, Theo jumped. “HOLY—”
Past-Wemmbu broke it. He said almost cheerfully that now they could pinpoint Spoke’s location.
“Why are you so happy bro?”
They discover the coordinates and Wemmbu leaves. Parrot, still on screen, glanced over the debris and noticed what was left beneath it, redstone machines tucked under the ruin like bones under a shallow grave.
In the room, Theo muttered, “He always leaves once he gets what he wants.”
Parrot returned to Wemmbu’s base.
Manepear groaned and let his head thump against the wall with a solid, defeated thud. “Oh we’re back here. I hate this part.”
Theo leaned forward. “Ugh, it’s like a horror movie dude.”
Wemmbu whined, offended in advance, “Get out of my house!”
Parrot descended the long tunnel again, far more confidently this time. He reached the iron door.
Flame, arms crossed against the wall, spoke, “Yeah. No turning back after this, bro.”
Theo whispered at the screen as if past-Parrot could hear him. “Just go in, man.”
“Don’t encourage him!” Spoke snapped.
He goes inside to discover one of the machines he'd once seen in the remains of a Wonder, along with that seem to be duped fireworks.
“Nope,” Manepear said instantly, covering his face with one hand like he could block the plot with his palm. “I’ve seen enough Disney movies to know what happens next. Nothing good ever follows that.”
Parrot was still inside the room, carefully circling the machine, when he froze. Voices.
In the viewing room, Egg straightened so fast it looked like his spine had been yanked by a hook. “Oh no.”
On screen, Parrot reacted on pure instinct. burying himself in the weeping vines just as the hidden entrance slid open again.
Spoke snapped his fingers, pointing at the screen. “Y’know, I always thought that was a good sneaky spot! Low visibility, structural support, free camouflage, it’s got everything.”
Mapicc raised a brow, a slow, knowing smile spreading across his face. He swiveled his body to face Spoke. “And what, pray tell, do you know about optimal ceiling-vine-based surveillance positions, Mr. Spoke?”
Spoke leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head, his smile wide and completely unrepentant, the posture of a man who had never once survived a situation by being normal. “A gentleman never kisses and tells, Mapicc. But let’s just say I may know a thing or two about architectural loopholes.”
On screen, Wemmbu said Parrot was getting too close to finishing the orbital cannon. He said Parrot’s cannon must not be fired under any circumstances, and then he turned to Roshambo and told him he needed him to take care of it, take care of Parrot, and in return he’d give Roshambo what he wanted. Roshambo nodded once and left.
The hidden room settled back into silence. For half a second, then Parrot dropped. He tore free of the vines like a blade being drawn, wings snapping wide as he plummeted straight toward Wemmbu.
In the viewing room, Theo shouted, “Oh—”
Parrot hit Wemmbu full-force. Wemmbu staggered back into the machinery, sparks flying as redstone cracked under the impact. The sound rang through the bunker. But Parrot didn’t stop. He used the rebound to lunge again, fists flashing, wings beating hard enough to rattle the walls. Every hit carried weeks of restraint, of doubt, of watching the server rot while everyone else looked away.
In the viewing room, Flame gave a slow, approving nod. “Not bad.”
Wemmbu recovered instantly, because of course he did, because Wemmbu did not survive this long by being slow about anything. He caught Parrot’s next blow, twisted, and slammed him into the floor hard enough to crater stone. Parrot rolled, barely missing a follow-up strike that would have ended it.
In the viewing room, Spoke sucked in air. “Oh, that’s a skill gap.”
Manepear, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, nodded once, his expression grim. “Yeah. Parrot’s scrappy. He’s not trained for this.”
On screen, Parrot sprang back up anyway, eyes burning. He raised his weapon. Parrot’s voice shook the room, raw and unfiltered. He threatened to kill Wemmbu.
In the viewing room, everything froze. Theo, uncharacteristically hushed, whispered, “He doesn’t say stuff like that often. He means it.”
On screen, Wemmbu didn’t look afraid. He looked disappointed. He disarmed Parrot in a blur and sent him skidding across the floor again. He stood over him for half a breath, weapon raised. Parrot didn’t move for a second, and then he demanded answers instead of swinging, why the Wonders, why the machines, why him?
In the viewing room, the real Parrot let out a long, slow exhale, his shoulders slumping. “I couldn’t beat him,” he admitted quietly, to no one in particular. “Not like that.”
Flame grunted in agreement. “Smart. Only thing left to do really.”
On screen, Parrot pushed himself up anyway, battered but unbroken, interrogating instead of attacking. Forcing Wemmbu to talk. Wemmbu hesitated.
Egg murmured, a faint smile touching his lips, “Truth is the one thing Wemmbu doesn’t know how to truly counter.”
On screen, Wemmbu smiled. Then he ran.
Theo, the tension snapping like a rubber band, threw his hands in the air and shouted, “Who’s the biggest bird now, huh. The bird who stays and fights, or the bird who flies away. Checkmate feather fraud!”
Wemmbu furrowed his eyes at the cockatiel, hand hovering over Gambit, His voice was dangerously calm. “Theo. I will ban you right here, right now bro, and turn you into a pile of cooked chicken and experience if you do not stop.”
Theo met his gaze, the grin not fading. He leaned forward, and with exaggerated, silent clarity, he mouthed four words directly at Wemmbu. “I’m the biggest bird.”
On screen, Parrot burst out of the bunker after Wemmbu, wings slicing the air as he rocketed upward, clouds tearing past as he locked onto Wemmbu’s trail, and he said he’d keep chasing him as long as it took.
Egg slowly brought a hand to his chest, voice hushed with genuine awe. “That’s kind of a bar,” he breathed. “Like, genuinely cinematic. I got chills, bro. Actual chills. Look.” He held out an arm to demonstrate goosebumps that did not exist.
Wemmbu didn’t slow. He glanced back mid-flight, and said that Parrot didn’t have enough rockets to reach where he was headed.
In the viewing room, Manepear winced. “Oh, that’s such a petty flex.”
“Also…” Spoke muttered. “…probably true.”
Wemmbu added, smug even now. “It was.”
Egg’s head swiveled toward him so fast it was almost a swivel chair sound effect. “Wait. Hold on. Pause. You actually counted his resources while you were running for your life, bro. How.”
Wemmbu shrugged, a lazy, one-shouldered affair. “Bro, Parrot’s, like, the brokest person I know. Other than Flame, obviously.”
Flame froze. “What the hell does that mean, bro?” He pointed a finger at Wemmbu. “I’m not broke, bro.”
Wemmbu blinked slowly, a picture of condescending serenity. “Bro. Your house gets raided. Every. Single. Day. Your chests are just full of chungus loot and golden carrots, bro. You don’t even have full netherite. I saw you using iron boots last Tuesday.”
Flame’s face flushed a shade that nearly matched his name. “At least I have a house, bro! Like, an actual structure with walls and a door! All you have is Egg, bro. You’re a bum.” He gestured wildly at Egg, who immediately recoiled.
Egg threw his hands up, eye wide. “Why am I getting involved in this, bro? I didn’t do anything. I’m literally just sitting here.”
Wemmbu waved a dismissive hand. “Leave Egg alone, bro. He don’t count. He’s like… a cute little chungi.”
Egg’s eye widened. “The hell does that mean? You’re making me sound like I’m a pet rock with separation anxiety, bro. I’m actually offended.”
“You are my pet Egg,” Wemmbu said, his tone final and dripping with affection. He reached over and ruffled Egg’s hair, which only made Egg scowl deeper.
On screen, Parrot broke off the pursuit and Wemmbu vanished into distance. So Parrot flew back to his cannon. He landed hard beside the machine, starting to fix what Wemmbu had broken.
Spoke blinked. “I lowkey forgot about the cannon.”
Mapicc furrowed his brows. “How?”
Spoke shrugged helplessly. “There’s been a lot, bro.”
Theo nodded like that was the most reasonable statement anyone had said all day. “We’ve had, like, three separate emotional arcs since the last time the cannon was on screen.”
While he's working on the cannon, he gets interrupted by Roshambo who tells him to stop. Roshambo is followed by JumperWho, Derapchu, and Fantst.
In the viewing room, Manepear groaned immediately. “These kids again?”
“They’re nice people,” Parrot muttered, looking away. "Kinda."
Spoke made a small noise. “Nice people who are about to jump you, bro.”
“They’re not jumping me yet.” Parrot said automatically.
On screen, Roshambo told Parrot to stop. He said there was no reason to set the cannon off, and Parrot argued back immediately. Roshambo explained that most of them were already gone, that firing the cannon would only perpetuate a cycle of destruction until everything else was gone too.
“Damn,” Spoke frowned.
Mapicc’s gaze flicked to Spoke. “Look at you. Growth.”
Spoke didn’t take the bait. “Shut up, bro.”
Parrot tells him that the cannon is set to fire in ten minutes, and Roshambo says either Parrot should prevent that or he'll prevent it himself. Parrot turned to the other three guardians and asked if they were on Roshambo’s side, and they said they were, one after the other.
In the viewing room, Parrot’s feathers twitched. “That hurt.”
Theo’s expression softened for half a second. “Bro, it’s like when your mom tells your cousins to come get you and they actually do it.”
“Why would you say that,” Manepear muttered, sounding personally harmed by the comparison.
Parrot asked Roshambo what he told them, Roshambo just shrugged like that was the dumbest question he’d heard all day and said it didn’t matter, which was a wild take for someone who was currently sprinting around a server that was actively trying to delete itself, and Parrot, of course, did not take that well, because Parrot never takes anything well, and he snapped right back that Roshambo was getting played by Wemmbu, and Roshambo, without missing a beat, told him that was rich coming from the guy who was clearly being puppeteered by Spoke
Spoke threw his hands up so violently it looked like he was trying to swat the argument out of the air. “I didn’t even talk to him!”
Egg, without looking at him, said, “You don’t have to talk to manipulate, bro. Your vibes do it for you.”
Spoke made a choked sound. “That’s not how anything works.”
“That’s literally how everything works,” Flame murmured from the wall, and the fact he sounded kind of bored about it made it worse.
On screen, Parrot disagreed and told the other three about the vault in Wemmbu’s base, about the duped items, about the proof. He urged them to follow him to the base so he could show them, so he could prove Roshambo and Wemmbu had been planning something.
Roshambo accused him of buying time, and even Parrot’s past self flinched at that because it hit too close to true, but Parrot pushed forward anyway, leading them into the base. And then he discovered the door to the secret room was gone.
Theo’s sunglasses dropped a fraction, and it was the tiniest movement, but it said everything about the way his brain was recalibrating. “What the hell, bro,” he said, but he didn’t sound angry.
Wemmbu shrugged. “I got rid of it bro.”
Theo made a strangled noise. “He can’t keep getting away with saying bro after committing crimes.”
On screen, Roshambo’s group started talking fast, the timer suddenly loud again, the reality of the cannon snapping back into place, and they realized out loud that they only had five minutes left to stop it.
In the viewing room, Theo shot upright. “Five?”
Manepear hissed, “Oh my god.”
Spoke stared at the screen. “Okay,” he said, voice going flat in that way that meant he was trying not to sound like he was about to throw up, “so we’re cooked.”
Theo didn’t even bother pretending. “That’s actually awful.”
Parrot watched himself bolt out of the base, heart clearly outrunning his plan.
On screen, Roshambo’s voice followed behind Parrot, demanding to know what Parrot thought he was accomplishing, what end he thought justified any of this, saving rubble, prolonging a war that was already lost, and Roshambo’s phrasing had that sickening calm of someone who believed he was being reasonable while he pushed someone toward the edge. Past-Parrot shouted back that Roshambo didn’t understand them, didn’t understand anything, and then he broke again, the anger collapsing into something raw and wordless, and he flew.
Egg muttered, without looking away, as if he took his eyes off the screen the whole thing would happen faster, “There’s still time, right?”
Flame hadn’t moved from the wall, arms crossed, posture set like he’d been carved there, but his voice came out lower than usual, almost gentle in a way that felt wrong coming from him. “There isn’t, bro.”
Parrot tries returning to his cannon and states that it's firing in twenty seconds.
In the viewing room, Parrot went rigid. Like his body remembered the next part before his brain let him.
Because when past-Parrot reached it, the cannon wasn’t there in any meaningful sense anymore. The machine was being blown up, metal and redstone and effort turning into a bloom of redstone dust and blocks. Roshambo hovered at the edge of the blast radius on screen and said it flatly, Parrot should’ve listened.
Theo winced like the words had hit him instead. “That’s a cold line.”
On screen, Parrot snapped. He flew straight at Roshambo and hit him hard. The first strike sent Roshambo reeling, armor flashing under the impact. Parrot followed with another, and another, fury bleeding through every movement.
In the viewing room, Egg stood halfway without realizing it, hands lifting like he could reach into the footage and grab Parrot by the shoulders. “This is bad.”
Manepear shook his head. “Bro just activated the cutscene where the boss has a second health bar.”
And then, like the universe heard Manepear and decided to prove him right, the others joined in on screen. Jumper. Derapchu. Fantst.
Spoke watched with his mouth slightly open. “…They’re all on him.”
In the room, Parrot made this tiny sound that was almost a chuckle, except it didn’t have any humor in it, and he said it way too casually for the way his hands were clenched, “I guess they’ve been betraying me from the start huh?”
Nobody answered right away, and the sentence just sat there, heavy and awkward, because it felt wrong to fill the silence with anything.
On screen, they all stop when they experience a lag.
In the viewing room, everyone tensed at the same time, because they’d all learned what that meant, and because nothing good ever came after that.
Theo pointed at the screen like pointing could physically cancel it. “No. No no no. Not the lag. Not the lag right now.”
Flame’s eyes narrowed. “Here it is.”
On screen, all five of them arrived and paused at the monument at the same time, because the Wonder was gone.
In the viewing room, nobody spoke at first.
Past-Parrot turned on Roshambo, and he said it was Roshambo’s fault, that they could’ve stopped it, that they had the window, that Spoke’s cannon could’ve been destroyed before this happened, but Roshambo chose to do nothing
In the present, Parrot’s jaw tightened. “I wasn’t fair,” he admitted quietly, and there was something in the way he said it that made it clear he’d replayed this argument in his head a thousand times. “But I wasn’t wrong either.”
Egg nodded, solemn. “Your thesis was correct. Your delivery could have been better, bro.”
On screen, Fantst’s voice cut in. He said there was still one Wonder left, and then he asked Parrot if there was any way to stop it from being destroyed, and Parrot hesitated for half a second, the kind of hesitation that meant he was weighing whether hope was even worth the energy, and then he said yes, but only if Roshambo didn’t try to stop him, and Roshambo finally answered that he wouldn’t interfere.
Parrot launched straight into explanation. He explained how he’d figured out the firing cycle. Spoke’s orbital cannon fired every six hours. But the loading chamber? That could be optimized. Twenty-five percent faster.
In the viewing room, Egg’s eye widened. “That’s… actually solid,” he said.
Spoke muttered, almost impressed despite himself, “Yeah, that tracks.”
Parrot laid it out clean, that if they gathered materials in fifteen minutes, built the optimized chamber in an hour, they could destroy Spoke’s cannon before the next firing window,
Theo breathed out like he’d been holding his breath since the lag. “That’s my Parrot,” he said softly, and there was something painfully proud in it.
One by one, the others agreed to help. Except Roshambo. He said he’d help, but he wasn’t making any promises.
In the viewing room, Parrot stared at the screen. “That was the best I was going to get.”
Theo nodded. “That’s the most cooperative Roshambo has ever been.”
Spoke added, “At that point? Yeah,” and he let out this tired little exhale, “you work with what you’ve got.”
Roshambo and his teammates bring Parrot all the materials in front of the final Wonder, and Parrot tasks them to construct a bunker using obsidian in front of the Wonder while he builds the cannon.
In the viewing room, Manepear watched the obsidian go up and made a face like he was trying to remember if grief had a patch note. “So the plan is basically,” he said slowly, “we build a panic room in front of god’s last house and then we shoot the sky.”
Spoke’s eyes flicked between Parrot’s hands and the materials like he was grading the build in real time. “It’s not the worst approach,” he admitted, “Obsidian is one of the only things you can put between yourself and orbital nonsense without it turning into decorative gravel.”
On screen, everyone gets to work. Parrot finishes the orbital cannon, and stepped back from the cannon and checked it one last time, hands hovering for half a second over the final input like the button was hot.
In the viewing room, Spoke’s shoulders rose a fraction, he knew exactly what Parrot was feeling.
Parrot, Roshambo, Jumper, Derapchu, and Fantst enter the obsidian bunker and wait for four and a half hours until the cannon fires.
In the viewing room, Manepear groaned. “I hate this part,” he said. “Bro, I feel like I’m watching myself microwave a burrito that’s either going to be perfect or explode.”
Theo made a small noise like he was amused against his will. “Thank you for that diabolical image,” he said, and then his face hardened again. “I didn’t want to sleep tonight anyway.”
The server experiences a lag, signalling that the cannon has fired, and they immediately try to dig out.
Egg’s feathers puffed up slightly, his stress tell, and he muttered, “It’s lagging too long,” like he was trying to will the server back into behaving by correctly naming the problem.
On screen, the lag kept going. When the world finally stabilized enough for them to break through and spill out of the bunker, it felt almost merciful for about half a second. Then they saw it.
In the viewing room, Manepear’s mouth fell open and stayed there. “No shot,” he whispered, and then, because denial always came with commentary for him, “No, that is literally two shots.”
Spoke went pale. “That’s the instability.”
Theo swallowed. “That’s disgusting.”
Spoke's and Parrot's orbital cannons have gone off at the same time.
Theo exhaled slowly. “I hate this universe,” he said, and it was delivered with the calm of someone making a factual statement.
They all watch as the final Wonder is blown up. When Fantst says that they've lost, Parrot states that everyone has.
The video cut so abruptly it almost felt like the server had gotten tired of them too, like it had decided it had shown enough of the crime scene and now it wanted to spare their eyes, and for a long moment none of them moved because moving would mean admitting that what they’d just watched was real, and that there wasn’t going to be a secret extra clip where the Wonder survived and everyone learned a lesson and went home and the universe apologized for being weird.
Manepear was the first one to breathe like a person again, and even then it came out shaky. “Is that it?” he asked, not quite looking at anyone.
Spoke turned his head slowly, and when he looked at them his expression had that defensive tightness. “Well what do you want me to say bro?” he snapped. “That I shouldn’t have blown up the Wonders? Just leave the duped items that I couldn’t take with me there?”
Theo blinked at him like he’d misheard. “You shouldn’t have duped them in the first place bro,” Theo said.
Spoke’s laugh came out short and nasty. “Oh well just blame everything on me then, Mr Savior complex,” he said, leaning back against the wall.
Parrot scoffed immediately. “Savior complex?” he repeated, and there was something almost offended in it.“I don’t have a savior complex.”
“Yeah you do,” Flame said at the exact same time Theo did, and then Flame added, “bro it’s like, your whole thing.”
Parrot’s eyes narrowed, and for a second the room felt smaller. “That is not what this is,” he said, and he sounded controlled, which was almost scarier than if he’d shouted. “I did it because somebody had to do something.”
Spoke pointed at the dark screen. “And I did what I did because somebody had to handle the aftermath,” he shot back, voice rising now, letting the frustration show. “Did I duped them? Yeah. But if you wanna talk about somebody had to, bro, I had a chest full of items that literally should not exist dude. I had gear that was going to get taken, duped again, and then suddenly it’s not just Wonders getting blown up, it’s everybody. So yeah, I blew stuff up. And yeah, I friggin’ duped. And no, I’m not gonna sit here and pretend the server is some sacred museum where nothing bad happens.”
Egg finally moved, sitting forward with his hands clasped. “Okay, but that logic still doesn’t track,” he said. “If you’re saying this is about containment, bro, nuking Wonders is basically the loudest possible way to tell the entire server, hey, something’s broken and also there’s a prize worth killing over.”
He exhaled, eyes narrowing. “So either you were actually thinking long-term and you picked the most obvious option on the menu bro, or you were freaking out and convinced yourself it was some big-brain move.”
Spoke’s jaw tightened. “Oh my god bro, don’t do that,” he said, and now he was looking at Egg instead of Parrot. “Stop psychoanalyzing me.”
Theo made a small sound that was half laugh and half disgust. “You literally just psychoanalyzed Parrot’s whole personality with two words bro,” he said, and then his eyes flicked to Parrot. “Also, Parrot, you kind of do have a savior complex.”
“I do not,” Parrot said immediately, fast.
“You do,” Theo insisted, and his voice cracked just slightly on the word. He shifted on his feet. “You can call it responsibility if that makes you feel better dude, but you keep acting like if you don’t personally intervene then nobody will, and then when people don’t do what you want, you take it as betrayal, and I get it, I do, because half the time you’re right and everyone else is being useless.”
Parrot’s hands flexed in his lap, and he stared at the blank screen like it was safer than looking at any of them. “I watched myself try,” he said quietly, and the softness in his voice did not make it less intense but instead made it worse. “And it didn’t work, because the server didn’t want it to. So yeah, I’m not gonna sit here and let Spoke act like he was doing some noble cleanup job while he was also the person who put the mess in the room bro.”
Spoke’s eyes flashed. “Oh my god. Are you seeing this Mapicc?” he said to his friend, incredulous, and then he laughed again, but this time it sounded more like pain than humor. “We’re really doing this, dude.”
His hands were clenched so tight his thumbs had gone pale, and he kept staring at Parrot like he was trying to decide whether to apologize or double down. Parrot didn’t look away either, but the anger in him had gone quiet.
But then the projector crackled.
ALL OF THAT WAS THE INSTABILITY.
Nobody moved at first, but Theo was the one who answered. “What do you mean, that was the instability,” he said, voice taut. “The duping was the instability. You said that earlier. You made us watch it. What was it?”
THE DUPING WAS ONLY THE START OF IT.
Manepear let out a small, involuntary sound, something between a laugh and a gag. “Bro what,” he said.
THAT IS THE SIMPLEST EXPLANATION. THE LAG WAS THE INSTABILITY.
Spoke exhaled sharply through his nose. “Okay, so it’s a performance problem,” he said, voice tightening as he talked. “So we hit some threshold and the server couldn’t keep up. That’s what you’re saying. Too much happening, boom, lag.”
The projector answered immediately. NO. THAT IS WHAT YOU WISH IT TO BE. THE INSTABILITY IS WHEN THE WORLD CAN NO LONGER AGREE ON WHAT HAPPENED. WHEN TOO MANY IMPOSSIBLE THINGS HAVE BEEN MADE TRUE AT THE SAME TIME.
For a beat, nobody spoke.
“Dude, what?” Mane finally managed, and it came out thin.
Parrot didn’t look at anyone. When he spoke his voice was quiet, and the quietness pulled the room toward him.
“So I did it,” he said. “I actually did it.”
Theo blinked, staring at Parrot, because Parrot’s tone didn’t match the sentence. “What?”
“The lag,” Parrot said, and his eyes didn’t move, but something in his face tightened. “Both of our… Both of our orbital cannons. We created conditions where the Wonder both could and could not exist.”
CORRECT.
PARROT’S PLAN PRODUCED A TIMELINE IN WHICH SPOKE’S CANNON WAS DESTROYED BEFORE THE FIRING WINDOW. SPOKE’S ACTIONS AND THE PRE-EXISTING FIRING CYCLE PRODUCED A TIMELINE IN WHICH THE WONDER WAS DESTROYED REGARDLESS OF INTERVENTION.
WHEN BOTH TIMELINES REMAINED SUPPORTED BY THE SYSTEM, THE SYSTEM BEGAN TO LAG WHILE IT ATTEMPTED TO RESOLVE THE CONTRADICTION. THE MOMENT OF RESOLUTION REQUIRED A SINGLE CONSISTENT OUTCOME. THE OUTCOME SELECTED WAS THE ONE THAT PRESERVED THE GREATEST CONTINUITY OF STATE ACROSS THE SERVER.
Theo made a sound like he was going to argue, and then he stopped.
Wemmbu, who had been silent, blinked twice like the words were moving too fast for his brain to buffer. “Excuse me? What?” he said. “I don’t understand.”
Parrot blinked, turning his head a fraction. “Think of it like this,” he said, quiet. “That last bit of lag when I shot my cannon? The server was lagging because it couldn’t decide which version of what just happened it was supposed to lock in.”
Wemmbu’s brows furrowed. “So you were like… making it lag on purpose?”
“No,” Parrot said fast, and it came out tired, like he hated how dumb it sounded. “Not on purpose. I was just trying to win. I’m saying we set it up so the Wonder both did and didn’t get saved,” he said. “And when the server had to pick one reality, it picked the one that fit best with what was already true. The one that needed the least rewriting. Which is… the one where it still gets destroyed.”
Wemmbu frowned. “So the lag was it rereading.”
“Yeah,” Egg said, glancing at Wemmbu. “It’s the system stalling while it shoves two different outcomes into one. Call it computation if you want, bro, but what it’s computing is which reality costs less to keep.”
Wemmbu stared at Egg like he was crazy.
Theo finally found his voice again, but it came out smaller than before. “And it picked the one where the Wonder dies,” he said.
Parrot nodded once. He didn’t look smug about it. He looked kind of sick. “Because that one’s easier,” he said. “The server already had Spoke’s cannon cycle, already had the damage from duping and moving stuff around, all of it. If it kept the version where we actually stopped it, it’d have to rewrite too much.”
Wemmbu’s mouth opened and closed. “But you stopped it.”
Parrot’s eyes flicked, and for a second you could see the rawness underneath the control, the hurt of it, the way the idea had been sitting in his chest like a stone. “I thought I did,” he said. “I mean, I thought I found a path where we would win, but it turns out I didn’t.”
INDEED. I SEE WHY MY CREATOR LIKES YOU.
Egg’s eyes slid to the projector, then to the others, then back. “Okay,” he said finally, voice light in a way that wasn’t really light, “can you not do the ominous fan-club thing right now.”
But Manepear’s head snapped up, a thought forming in his head. “Wait,” he said, and the word came out too quickly. “Likes?”
Parrot blinked once, alittle click of realization that made his posture go tight. “Wait,” he said, and then he said it again, slower. “Yeah. Wifies is dead. What do you mean likes.”
The projector continued to hum on.
THAT IS WHAT I SAID.
Parrot stared at the screen. “So you’re just going to breeze past that,” he said. “What are you talking about?”
I CAN NOT PROVIDE ANY MORE INFORMATION.
Theo leaned forward like his body wanted to cross the distance and physically shake an answer out of the wall. “Can not or will not,” he said, but the projector stayed silent, so Theo’s eyes flashed. “Hey, answer Parrot!”
Nothing.
The silence sat there stubbornly, and after a moment Parrot finally looked away from the wall, but he didn’t look at any of them. He looked down instead, at his own hands or nothing at all, like he didn’t trust his eyes to stay steady.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, and even as the words left him they sounded wrong, like he was saying them because he wanted them to be true. “It can’t tell us anything dude. It just says stuff.”
Theo’s head whipped towards his companion. “But it does matter!” he said, and he didn’t even bother keeping his voice even. “It didn’t have to say that Parrot. It chose to.”
Parrot didn’t answer immediately. He took a slow breath instead. “We already know what it does,” he started, staring at his hands, “and none of it changes the fact that Wifies is dead. I saw the chat message.”
He had to be. Parrot didn’t know what he would feel if the case were otherwise.
Theo’s mouth pulled into a thin line so tight it looked painful, and he glanced away like he didn’t want Parrot to see what had just happened to his face but the movement was a betrayal anyway. For a beat he just sat there staring at nothing with his jaw clenched hard enough that it was obvious he was choosing silence on purpose.
LIKE PREVIOUSLY STATED, THERE ARE MORE RECORDINGS.
They all looked at each other. Spoke shifted in his spot, a sharp, restless motion. “Who’s next,” he muttered.
The projector hummed, steady and patient.
BEGINNING PLAYBACK: INSTABILITY CATALYST ANALYSIS
TITLE: BREAKING INTO MINECRAFT’S MOST ILLEGAL VAULT
PRIMARY SUBJECT OF ANALYSIS: WEMMBU
ALL REMAINING SUBJECTS WILL REMAIN PRESENT FOR CONTEXTUAL REVIEW.
Wemmbu went completely still, and then, a second later, his shoulders jerked like he’d been slapped. “Oh, come on. Me?”
“I didn’t do anything,” he continued, and it came already defensive. “Like, yeah, I did stuff. Obviously I did stuff. Everyone did stuff. But this is insane. You guys watched me. I just played.”
Flame’s mouth twitched like he was trying not to laugh at the phrasing, but it didn’t quite make it into a smile. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s what everyone says right up until it’s their name on the screen, bro.”
Wemmbu rolled his eyes so hard. “That’s not the same,” he shot back, too fast. “Like, okay, Parrot was doing weird orbital cannon timing stuff and Spoke-” he cut himself off mid-breath like he’d remembered Spoke was in the room, then tried to reroute without looking at him. “Spoke had, you know, the whole… whatever that was.”
Egg glanced at the others, then back to Wemmbu. “Hey,” he said, softer, “The recordings aren’t, like, accusatory bro,” He gestured vaguely at the projector, like he didn’t have a better word than this.
Wemmbu made a small sound through his nose, halfway between a scoff and a laugh. “Cool,” he drawled out.
Flame rolled his eyes behind the blindfold. “Bro, come on man,” he said to Wemmbu, “Just watch.”
Wemmbu turned on him, incredulous. “I am watching,” he snapped, “I’m literally sitting here being watched while I watch. This is the most watched I’ve ever been bro.”
Flame raised a brow at him, so Wemmbu sighed. “Fine. Fine. I’ll watch. At least now it‘s interesting.”
“Congratulations,” Flame said.
Wemmbu stared. “You’re so annoying.”
That got a small, unwilling laugh out of Manepear, and then he clapped a hand over his mouth.
Egg’s eyes flicked to Wemmbu, then to the projector, then back. “You think I'll be in it?”
Wemmbu furrowed his brows so hard it made a little crease appear between them “I don’t know? Maybe? I barely remember anything.”
Egg’s eye stayed on him for a moment longer than necessary, and then he nodded once. “If I’m in it,” Egg said, “I’ll sit next to you.”
Wemmbu’s face shifted. “Bro,” he said, “you’re already sitting next to me.”
Egg’s voice went lighter. “I’ll still sit next to you, bro.”
Wemmbu let out a laugh under his breath, quick and embarrassed, and then he looked forward again. “Okay,” he muttered. “Whatever. Let it play.”
The footage played.