Press Start [homestuck] (on hold)

Chapter Six - Two

Eagle's POV

I pulled out my phone, the old model, since I normally refused to actively utilize all the merch my dad got me, and quickly shot Sara a text, reading, 

"Hey. Wake up, we need to get started." Short and to the point, as per the norm.

A few moments later, I saw her getting out of bed. She was wearing just a bra and sweatpants. She marched over to where the camera was hidden cleverly in her wall, and threw something over it, after flipping me the bird first. I pushed back in my wheeled office chair, sighing. She was volatile as always. A few moments later, I received a Skype call. I opened up the tab and looked back at Sara, who had put on a shirt and hoodie, both bright blue. Her arms were folded across her chest, and her eyes, which put her outfit in stark contrast with their unusual violet hue, glared back at me.

"Oh, calm down. I had something important to talk to you about." I said, my deep voice reaching her sharply.

"Whatever. I just which I could figure how to disable this camera, so you wouldn't be perving on me all the time." She said with a huff. "Maybe I should get Gideon down here sometime to cut the thing out."

"You and I both know 'perving' was not what I was doing. I wouldn't be associating with you if I didn't have to, and neither would you." I told her coldly. I didn't have time for her paranoia shit.

"Whatever. You don't have to be a jerk about it. So, what's the plan? You want me to be your server?"

"Yes, that's the plan. As the leader of Red team, I have to enter the session first. You go next. I checked, and the other team only have one player in-game."

"Yeah? Who'd they send in first?" She asked, intrigued.

"Jez, I think. But they had an error in the process and one of their other players, Lilly, self-prototyped." I told her.

"Self-prototyped? But didn't you say that was incredibly dangerous?" Sara said incredulously.

"Yup." I concluded grimly. "She has barely even a 10% chance of survival."

Sara gasped. "10%? That's-" She started to say, but I cut her off, saying, "Nope, not our problem. It's a competition between the two teams, so we can't spend time worrying about the other team's possible casualties."

That silenced her, and I looked away. I hated acting like this, cold and heartless, especially when the subject in question was Lilly, but this was the way it had to be.

"Okay, Sara. Start up the server program." I told her.

"I'm on it. Sit tight and we'll get started in a few minutes." Came the response, and she ran off in a flash of blonde hair.

I got out of the chair and walked over to the chest that sat in the corner. I entered the lock combination quickly, and opened it up with a huge creak. Inside it was all my secret possessions, chief among them my notebook, which was basically just a journal. I had been writing in it since a quite young age, and it contained some of the only information about my mother. That was probably the only reason I kept it. I took the journal out and slipped it into my coat pocket.

I had planned out every moment of the process of entering Sburb, and although what I was about to do was extremely risky, I was ready.

At that point, Sara's face swam back into view on the computer screen. "Ready to start?" She asked me. I nodded curtly, and the program began.

*switch to Sara's POV*

I switched off the Skype window on my laptop and entered a few basic commands, bringing up the Sburb interface. There were a bunch of machines I needed to place in Eagle's house, which was fine because his 'house' was pretty much a mansion. I put them all down, and the Kernel sprite thing showed up, floating right in front of Eagle's face.

"Ok, Eagle. You know the drill. Something abiotic and something biotic." I spoke into my headset.

"Got it." Eagle said back.  I watched as he picked through the chest of stuff he had opened up a moment ago. Predictably, he pulled out a weapon, specifically a small ebony knife. He marvelled at its intricacy for a moment, then held it out in the palm of his hand. He thrust it into the kernel sprite, and it began to swirl. What he did next was what surprised me. He pulled out an old leather - bound book, obviously of some sort of importance. He flipped through it until he reached a certain page, then ripped out all of the pages except that one page. Then he put the ripped pages into the sprite. As soon as they were all sucked in, the air around it began to warp, as if some sort of dimensional rift had opened up. 

As sever player, there was little that I could do, so I just tried to message Eagle on his phone. The camera view of his room had been replaced by static, so I just switched off my computer screen. I booted up Pester-Chum on my phone and opened up a chat log with EyeoftheEagle, which of course was his account. My username, by the way, is FrigidTyrant. The chat looked like this:

FT: U still there?

EE: Yes. And before you bother asking; Yes, I'm perfectly fine.

FT: Wtf was that all about?

EE: I have no idea what you're referring to.

FT: The whole prototyping thing! You'd think that you, the team leader, would know better than to prototype something that didn't work.

EE: What do you mean?

FT: You prototyped two abiotic items, a knife, and some pages. You were SUPPOSED to use a living thing for the other item.

EE: Sara, a book is made of pages. Pages are made from paper. Paper is made of bark, which comes from trees. And trees are, in fact, biotic. So. there was actually nothing wrong with my prototyping.

FT: Well, look who woke up this morning and decided to be a smartass.

EE: I'm not looking for your approval. Besides, I have my reasons for prototyping those pages. However, I have yet to see if my plan worked out. So, if you could get off my back long enough for me to get my bearings in the new dimension, that'd be stellar.

FT: Fine. Message me when you're done "getting your bearings".