(TW: Blood, vomit)
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Buffer stands in front of the doors leading to the space of the infamous code chemist. The dark magenta doors had chains over them, strung tight with a lock over them.
The Admin approaches and gently touches the lock. Closing her eyes, she digs back through fuzzy memory banks and remembers the code.
She flicks the small latches, and the lock falls to the ground and disintegrates. The chains fall and swing, and they, too, vanish. The doors creak as they slowly swing inwards, and Buffer steels herself.
She walks in, and the doors slam behind her. A familiar layer of pink mist covers the foyer of the castle-like space. Grandiose and imposing, with the ceiling arching into a dome. Various symbols and patterns were etched into the walls, a language only those well versed could know.
This was Pink's domain of the space that she and her group owned. It was far more empty than she remembered.
Buffer drags her fingers over the pillars as she walks, the pink mist gently swirling around her ankles. Her hair bounces with each step, similar to the Admin she helped all those years ago.
Years she couldn't remember all too well, but it wasn't like it mattered. She needed to get that formula.
“I know you're here, Pink,” Buffer calls out as she pulls away from the pillar. She comes to stand in between two staircases that lead up to the second floor. “And I know that you know I'm here and why I'm here.”
She starts to ascend the staircase, holding out her hand. “Why? Why would you do this?” She frowns, clenching her hands as she looks up at the ceiling. “So many Programs are sick because of what you released! So many of my friends are sick! What compelled you to do this?"
Silence is her answer.
She reaches the top of the stairs and looks around. It was eerily quiet. She couldn't even hear Pink's Moderators.
Buffer takes a few more steps before she hears footsteps behind her. She whips around, eyes wide, to spot-
“Green,” she speaks, voice soft. Green was Pink's lover and a fellow Admin. Somehow, he was capable of conjuring the things Pink would need to make her substances.
Green stares at her, his body lax. He approaches, his footsteps louder than her own.
“G-Green?” Buffer stutters, backing away.
In a few short moments, Green was directly in front of her, towering over the young Admin. She flinches, looking up at his unreadable expression. His face is blank. Different from the past.
At least, she thinks so. Memories regarding him tend to be fuzzier than most, third only to her memories to Pink, which was second to her.. memories of her time here in general.
He reaches out a hand, and Buffer flinches. Is he going to hit me? What is he-?
Green's hand gently grabs a moderate strand of her hair, slowly running his fingers through it before stopping at the ends. The ends were a soft pink. (A pink Buffer never really remembers changing them to.) His brows were furrowed now, eyes narrow. He almost seems to be.. studying her.
He moves his hand away, letting her hair drop back into place. He mutters something under his breath. She only catches the “... you” part, though.
“Green?” Buffer blinks, utterly confused.
The Admin merely turns on his heel and walks off, heading towards the darkness that consumed the opposite end of the hall.
“Wait, Green!” Buffer calls, rushing after him. Despite the distance between them not being that large, Buffer couldn't catch him. Green was just barely out of reach, and soon, he walked into the darkness.
The younger Admin stops just at the edge, staring, confused. She couldn't even hear his footsteps anymore. Her logical processors were telling her none of this made sense and that she should just turn around, head to the laboratory, and grab the cure that she knew was there.
And yet, her curiosity nags her on. She wants to know what happened. What happened to Pink and her Moderators? Why was Green acting like this?
She inhales deeply and heads into the darkness. She feels on edge, but that's to be expected. There was something deeply wrong here. Green, as quiet as he could be, always answered her whenever she had questions, even if they were short or bullshit answers.
Steeling her nerves, she walks deeper and deeper into the darkness. It clings to the walls like moss-
Moss? Why did she make that comparison? Why would she-
Splash!
She flinches, stiffening. She slowly looks down, lifting her foot. She feels sick to her stomach to see blood mixed with moss swirling at her feet.
For a moment, her processor considered it to be Green's blood before it hit her. This was orange blood. Her heart drops.
Did.. did Orange get hurt? She thinks, slowly setting her foot back down and cringing at the small splash it makes. Why is there even moss here? I remember Pink hating that stuff..
She continues onward, her shoes splashing in the orange blood. She shudders at the noise, and a feeling of dread pools deep inside of her. This blood wasn't fresh at all, and yet it hadn't congealed or dried.
Her eyes flick to the bits and pieces of moss floating in the blood. Could it have something to do with that?
Buffer stops in front of a door. Looking down toward the bottom, she winces. “That's where the blood must be coming from,” she whispers, seeing the blood at a greater quantity there.
Reaching out, she grabs the door knob and twists it, swinging the door inward. “What is Green doing, heading into a place like this?” She murmurs, walking inside.
She jumps as the door slams shut behind her. She looks down and pales.
There was no blood. But an abundance of moss, that was all shades of green. Specks of orange littered the moss that coated the floor. (She couldn't help but notice how the specks of blood were the same shade as her own, and not Orange's. Orange's blood was a tad darker.)
Swallowing thickly with a now trembling body, Buffer continues forward, heading deeper into the room. A room she remembers well. While it was devoid of life, she saw the familiar work benches, large test tubes, and vials scattered about.
She walks over to one work desk and glances upward.
There was the balcony where Pink would watch Buffer work whenever the Admin had a test.
Looking back down, Buffer falters, seeing several text boxes. If she remembered right, Pink never took notes. The Admin merely committed everything to memory. Buffer was the one who took notes due to her poor memory. (But it was odd since she never needed to take notes in the Adminspace.)
She grabs one text box and reads.
Log #3
Another failure! I've failed again! This damned moss, where did it even come from?! Green can't figure it out either! We're all stumped!
It took her from me.. her smile.. her laugh.. the only one who truly knew and understood what we did here.. I can't lose her. I need to know what this moss did to her.
Buffer quickly clambers onto the table, staring at the moss on the floor. Though her eyes soon narrow, seeing how the moss was nowhere near the tables.
Odd.
She swipes through the textbox, seeing a second page.
Log #7
We got somewhere today. Red went to a world - Minecraft, I believed it was called. Yellow went with her, and they discovered… Fledging spores, so to speak. Apparently, the code they held nearly matched the code of moss that appeared here!
They won't be able to bring any here, but.. I couldn't care less. I'm going there myself. I'll fix her. Make her better. She'll wake up.
A swipe to the third page.
Log #10
Failures, failures, failures. I don't care what they say, I don't care that I'm being stubborn. They back off once I say it's so we don't have an infection of some sort spread. But I need to know, I need to figure this out. I will go insane if I don't.
This is nothing compared to what I have mastered.
This was definitely Pink’s writing. The Admin was always a bit intense whenever she had to write.
She set one down and picked up another.
Log #17
Red, such a hypocrite. Telling me to put down my work - as if she isn't working as much! No, no. I can't get upset. We're all hurting. None of my tests have yielded results.
But soon they will. I know they will.
Buffer slowly sits down on the table, swiping to the next page. “Hm..”
Log #24
I finally got something - it's less of a moss and more of a fungus. Green has been a tremendous help figuring this all out. Despite how many times I tell him, I know that he's blaming himself. None of us could have known she would.. deactivate. None of us knew she would bleed out.
None of us knew that she was mixing things she shouldn't be.
Who was Pink talking about? Did this happen sometime after Buffer left? It had to, considering that she couldn't find any memories relating to something even remotely like this.
Log #29
I managed to preserve a sample of her code. There was still code just a bit lingering. I grabbed it as soon as I saw it and put it into one of the test chambers.
I don't care how many times it takes. I'll fix her. Bring her back. She's not dead. That code still holds life. I'm sure of it.
Flicking through more of the pages, she frowns deeply as reads. It was more of the same. Pink declaring that she'd bring someone back, more notes about failures, and other sorts of things.
One apparent thing, though, was that Pink’s sanity and mental health had taken a hit by whatever had happened. Someone had deactivated a while after Buffer left, and Pink was trying to bring them back.
She left itches her shoulder, feeling a tingle there before grabbing the third text box.
Log #50
I can't forget the state of her when we first saw her that day. We were gone for just a few hours, and the lab was overrun by this damn fungus. And she was just. sitting there. Slumped over the table.
Her left arm was completely taken over by whatever the hell this thing is. So was her face. Her right ankle and left upper thigh.
We don't know how it got there. Got to her. All we know is that it's a fledging in only the Minecraft universe.
I'll eradicate it if I have to.
Buffer slowly clenches her hand. She rolls her right shoulder and tucks her left ankle under her right thigh.
This isn't about you. She tries to reason, to stop her worried thoughts. You would remember this.
Log #55
A breakthrough. A breakthrough. I got a breakthrough. Her code is still there, and I can remake it. She was never dead. Death never took her from me.
You'll be back. I'll bring you back.
Buffer's thumb trembles over the final word being covered. Slowly, she moves it.
I promise.
She exhales softly.
Log #60
I love Yellow. I care for them, and I cherish them, but if they don't get off my back about this.. who cares if this goes against all moral codes! I want her back! My Moderator, my apprentice, my heir - my DAUGHTER! I want her back! She's the perfection of what I do, the pinnacle of my teachings!
GIVE HER BACK!
Buffer, shakily, sets down that text box. “No more reading for a minute,” she mutters to herself. She felt shaky and sick, knowing that if she read more, she'd waste more time. She hops off the table, cringing at the soft squelch that comes from one of her feet landing in the moss.
She steps away and hurries over to another one of the tables, keen eyes spotting a box.
A box that had not been there before.
Throat feeling dry, she moves forward and clicks open the box.
Inside were the vials. Vials she knew contained the cure, because it was a cure she made as a test. It was how she knew. How she knew that Pink was behind this.
Buffer stares and stares and stares. She could take these and leave. She could take these and go back to the Adminspace, and try to forget what she saw today. She could ignore Green and Pink's behavior.
She could ignore it all and go home.
But she wouldn't. Because-
“Curiosity killed the cat,” Pink spoke, placing a hand on Buffer's head, “but satisfaction brought it back.”
Shaking her head, Buffer pulls herself from the memory and brings up a log box. From memory, she put down how to use and make more of the cure, something she knew Vitality and Kelsie would do just fine at replicating.
Opening a small portal command, she puts the box and log box through. Once she pulls her hands back out, it closes, and she's left in the darkness of the room.
Someone was watching her.
Her head snaps up to look at the balcony once more.
..
No one was there.
Buffer shudders. She glances around for any sign of vibrant pink, but finds none. She clenches a shaking hand over her chest, before her curiosity makes her look back at the text boxes. She makes her way over, hops back on, and shuffles through them.
Her eyes skim over the texts before something catches her attention. It was a number for.. something. Unlike the logs, it was something else that was numbered.
She lifts the text box and pales.
Clone.
It was a text box labeled ‘Attempts’. Swallowing down her fear, she opens it up.
59 entries. About clones.
The text box falls to the ground with a clatter when she sees the name. She feels bile rush up her through and she rushes as quickly as she can to a corner and retches.
“Ah, you're here!” The airy voice of Pink fills the room, and Buffer jolts. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she stumbles away and looks toward the balcony.
Pink stands there, hands clasped behind her back as Green stands behind her, looming over her shoulder.
“I've missed you dearly, Buffer.” Pink closes her eyes as she smiles. “I almost thought you were intentionally not visiting me!”
“That- That can't be true,” Buffer stammers, pointing to the text box. “Pink, tell me it isn't true - I'm begging you, tell me that isn't true!”
“What do you- Ooh.” Pink pauses before giggling. “Dear, it's as true as the sky is blue.”
Buffer felt like her whole world was crashing down.
Pink continues to smile down at her, and Green manages to, somehow, continue looking down at Buffer.
“You're a clone, Buffer. The best one yet, I must add.” The older Admin smiles. Buffer's knees buckle under her, nearly giving out.
Buffer can hardly think. Whatever Pink is saying doesn't register. Her hands grasp at the air as a portal opens behind her. And she runs through it, stumbling out to her office on the other side. She collapses onto the floor, body and voice shuddering with each breath.
She hears a gentle, “I'll see you soon,” before the portal behind her closes.
(happy birthday @local-angst-dispenser <3)
