#phwale

It had happened before.

When that channel first published, spawned was a more apt term, Dan and Phil found out from the YouScube home page. The two whales were huddled around Dan's blubtop, staring in disbelief.

"DanAndPhilCRAFTS?" said Phil, incredulously.

"We didn't make this, right?" Dan turned from the screen to look at Phil. He flicked his tail a little in stress. "I mean, we could have been deleriously drunk and filmed this...... and cleaned it up before morning..... and edited before morning..... and scheduled the post before... morning......."

"We did not make this."

"Then why are we in it? Why are we in this video?"

"I don't know," said Phil, "But we should probably watch it."

He reached over and pressed play.

They never spoke about it publicly, that year or the two following. Thankfully, the date of the upload meant that their audience assumed it was an April Fool's Day video, and that continued until today. For the most part.

There were murmurings of "crafties" of course, but they were few and far between. And since the channel hadn't posted in 7 years, Dan and Phil figured the dopplegangers had moved on, hopefully to other, more wholesome activities.

Which meant that this April 1rst hit them like an anchor.

"Oh my Neptune." Phil dropped his bowl of Kelpies onto the coffee rock in shock.

"What?" Dan swam over.

Phil showed him his shellphone, he'd been scrolling Twitter and found a screencap from YouScube.

"What?" Said Dan again. "Why? Why are they back it's been years!"

"I don't know."

They watched the video of course. It was longer than the other ones. It started out normally, as normal as a DanAndPhilCRAFTS video could be.

"Hello Crafties!" The opening line sent shivers down Dan and Phil's spines. Seeing a whale that looked like Dan speaking words he'd never said was always creepy.

They made their usual claims, that they'd been posting twice a day every day, even though this was the fourth video on their channel. They said their usual phrases: "soft and neat" "pro-tip" "mother" "Him". Their chaos beamed through the screen like sunlight through through the waves. "Don't cry, craft!"

And then....

And then it got even more sinister. The whales started filming outside, in a remote and deserted cove it looked like. They dissolved all four crafts in acid to summon Him. They went to an abandoned shipwreck covered in arcane and sinister symbols.

Dan and Phil watched all of this in horror, dread creeping up their tales. The comfort of their livingroom dropped away, they weren't in their home anymore, they were viewing themselves performing horrible acts.

They watched as Dan killed Phil. That had happened in the sea cucumber prints video, but this was more visceral. They could see the blood floating in the water, the pain in Dan's eyes as he swam to Phil's body onto the giant symbol in the middle of the deck.

Dan carved out Phil's heart.

Dan addressed the audience for the first time since they destroyed the titular slime.

"Hello crafties," He was out of breath, the sacrificial act clearly exhausted him both physically and emotionally. He took blood from Phil's heart and painted it onto one fin.

"Art.... is important."

He spread blood on his other fin.

"Soft..... and neat."

He began to do the same to Phil's fins, pressing the whale's own blood into his dead body.

"Creativity.... is nothing without friendship."

Phil's fin dropped to the floor.

"Don't cry...... Craft."

The last shot of the video was Dan and Phil, above the symbol, fin in fin. Alive? Dead? Something else? And a figure swam up behind them.

A mer-goat.

A Demon.

The water churned, white-hot, and the video ended.

YouScube auto-played one of their gaming channel videos, and the Dan and Phil sitting safe in their house were jarred back to reality.

Dan slowly reached over and clicked the airbar to pause it.

They sat in silence for a long time.

They didn't really need to speak. They knew what the other was feeling, and what the other would think about what they were feeling.

It had gone too far. The public would think it was a well produced April Fool's video. But they knew the truth.

It was real. There was a demon out there.

And Dan and Phil had to figure out what was going on at last.