Chapter Two

Of Arms and Artifacts

Kid sighed as he ran the .~ath files he had downloaded, having already chuckled at the fact that he, a grim reaper, was playing something written in a code based on death. This promised to be a long term endevor, and as such he had made sure to clear it with his father. The conversation had essentially gone by way of his father making sure he would be alright, and getting him a new set of pistols, given that the eight of them might be split up. The weapons themselves were a pair known as Ebony and Ivory, a fact that had put Kid on edge, until he discovered that the names were merely the major components, and that the two looked identical, in shape and color, that being a pair of black SIG Sauer P226's, with a pure white highlight along every edge.

Finally, his computer dinged, signalling it had finished installing both the client, and the server. As he watched, a window opened on his computer, a green spirograph on a white background slowly rotating and twirling. A loading bar slowly filled, finally giving way to an image of Crona's room. The room itself was half black, and half white, luckily only splitting horizontally. He found himself looking at Crona and Ragnarok watching their own screens, Crona on their desktop, and Ragnarok on what looked to be a tablet. He tabbed out of the interface, and booted up Soulchat, his particular favorite chat program, if only for the fact that it had symmetrical skins.

grimChild began chatting with twinAffliction and cursedTravesty.

GC: Crona, Ragnarok. It would seem my Server interface has chosen you two, thankfully for my sanity. Who have you connected with?

TA: I don't know how to deal with this, all of a sudden the interface started showing Soul's room. I don't know what's going on.

CT: Quit yer whining, at least you have an Interface. I'm getting relegated to chatroom monkey.

TA: I'm sorry, I don't know how to deal with two computers...

GC: Regardless of status as Main user or not, I think I can deploy this thing called a 'Cruxtruder'. Here, I'll put it down over here...

With a crash, the large object landed firmly in the corner of the room, looking for all intents and purposes like a large, squat box with a slightly smaller, but similarly squat cube on top of it, and a cylindar with a small circular handle on the side, and what looked to be a lid with the same spirograph that he had just seen on the loading screen in the center.

GC: ... Maybe try opening it?

CT: Sure, what could possibly go wrong? Ever.

As he watched, the black figure emerging from the pink haired meister's back reached over to the device, and yanked at the handle. With a clang, the lid burst off and onto the floor as a small, half pink and half black cylindrical object flew out, along with a sperical floating object that flashed between black and pink, with the same spirograph as on the lid within it. landing in Ragnarok's hands. Out of wonder, Kid moved the cursor to highlight the object.

GC: Evidently it's a 'Cruxite Dowel'... Wonder what it's for? And that floating thing is evidently a Kernelsprite...

CT: See anything else in that fancy interface of yers? 'Cause this thing just started counting down.

And indeed it had, for on the sides of the device four clock faces had appeared, and begun to proceed to count down from what seemed to be sixty minutes. Kid sighed again, this time wondering what event would occur at the end of the time, while checking the interface for any new options. A new option in the interface bar appeared, this time with what looked to be a strange variation on a wood lathe, with a mechanized carver, and a large rectangular platform with a stand about the size of the dowel that had just been created, with what looked to be a scanning device. He shrugged to himself before plucking the lathe, identified as a Totem Lathe out of the menu, and placing it down next to the Cruxtruder, before grabbing the platform, evidently known as an Alchemiter, and placing that the far corner of the room.

CT: Kid?

GC: Yes?

CT: You just blocked our door ya idiot!

GC: But look! It's perfectly balanced! One large object in one corner, and two small ones in the other!

CT: Kid. That is the only door out of this WHOLE DAMN ROOM!

GC: Here, I've evidently got some building controls. Give me a moment.

He clicked back to the Server window, opening the build menu, and proceeding to take a moment to carve out a symmetrical door, before moving on to beautifying the rest of the hallway Crona lived in, making sure everything was Symmetrical. Finally satisfied, he minimized the window, and loaded up the client. The menu that popped up quickly informed him that it had found an open Server user, specifically Patty. He waited a moment, for the inevitable chat window to open. And open it did.

adorableGiraffes began chatting with grimChild.

AG: Kid! I'm your server player! YAY~!

GC: Yes, yes Patty. Now, if you would please deploy my Cruxtruder and various associated devices?

With a slightly disconcerting crash, the three devices landed behind him, the Cruxtruder perfectly blocking his door. He sighed once more, before pulling out Ivory and firing a shot at the handle, rapidly spinning it and releasing the dowel and the Kernelsprite, while beginning the countdown, evidently running on the same time as Crona's. He was rather glad to find the Kernelsprite flipping between black and white. At least it and the dowel were symmetrical.

Kid pulled up a window of Yaldaboath, his internet browser, and quickly directed the search engine to find a walkthrough. If the game was as popular as Soul had claimed, then someone must have written one. He finally found one, made by someone with the handle of fatedGambler. From what he could dechiper of the admittedly convoluted and bizzare walkthrough, the Kernelsprite was able to have something called prototyping occur, caused by the introduction of either Organic, or Inorganic material to it, and evidently would act as the player's guide later in game. He paused a moment, before relaying the information, and a link to the walkthrough to everyone playing, while tossing into the flipping sphere his own Mask, shaped just as perfectly as his Father's, but with about half the power, causing the Kernelsprite to take on the form of a floating copy of the mask. From the responses he got from his chatting, apparently the server to client order ran from Soul, to Maka, to Tsubaki, to Black Star, to Liz, to Patty, to himself, to Crona, and finally back to Soul. He glanced at the dowel, before taking it over to the Alchemiter, where one could use a dowel to create objects apparently. He tossed the dowel onto the platform, and before he could even think twice about it, the device had whirred to life, scanning the dowel and forming a green cube on the raised center platform of the device. He tossed it into his Sylladex, a feature brought about by Professer Stein several years back. The system utilized a card mechanism that stored the object in question within an alternate dimension, accessable by whichever fetch modus one had installed. He had chosen to go with the Mage Modus, allowing him instant access to an object be simply summoning it, but he was aware the others had their own preferred methods. For instance, Maka preferred a method called Libros, which allowed her to pull items from the book she always carried, while Crona used Sanguine Absorption, allowing the ambiguous Meister to use his black blood and Ragnarok to dissolve, and reform items by storing it in their blood. Tsubaki and Black Star both used a variation on hammerspace, allowing them to pull objects from anywhere on their bodies at will. He also was aware that Liz and Patty just relied on the Pocket Modus, one that gave them access to what ever they stored in their pockets, whenever. Unfortunately, the Modus was limited by both the number of pockets a person wore, and how many extension attachments they had on the Modus.

He mentally took stock of the abstract concept known as sylladex viewing, noting that the green cube was called a perfectly generic object. Thank the gods it was symmetrical... Kid sighed, for the fourth time that day, he noted, before he realized that the Dowel was moving itself through the air over to the Totem Lathe. He walked over to the machine, gathering that it was Patty moving it via her interface as his Server player, and looked the odd device over. It almost looked something like a sewing machine, given the over head arm, the carving needle, the main body on the left... There was even a spot that looked to fit a Sylladex card's physical form exactly. He took stock of his inventory once more, realizing that he now had a card that was... holding a Card? Yes, yes it was. He flicked his wrist, summoning the seemingly empty card from the corners of the Abstract. He noted that it had small, rectangular holes punched in the face of the card itself, rather meticulously made, almost as if it were a... code of some kind. He glanced at the item to the right of the lathe, specifically Alchemiter. He paused for a moment, looked at the platform for the dowels, and back at the machine in front of him. Kid shrugged, before placing the punched card into the slot on the main body of the Lathe, and watched as the needle arm came down, as the dowel began to spin rapidly, the needle carving the dowel into a new form in a matter of seconds. Kid watched as the device spun to a stop, before pulling out the dowel, and replacing it on the pedestal.

Once more, the arm of the Alchemiter scanned it, and began to work, as a wireframe outline of a cube appeared, before materializing into said cube. The box itself seemed to be nothing of interest, until Kid's OCD took note. The entire thing was perfectly symmetrical.

"S-Such Beautiful Symmetry! It's so beauti-" Before he could continue, his toilet appeared above his new possesion, and promptly crushed it out of existence. His jaw dropped, shocked at the sudden absence of his precious new item. Kid promptly leveled a glare at the offending Porcelain Commode, before leveling his pistols at it as well. "YOU HORRIBLE, UNSYMMETRICAL, PIECE OF CRAP HOLDER~! YOU BASTARD, I'LL KILL YOU~!" With that, he opened fire on the throne, completely obliterating it within seconds. He didn't even notice that the sky was no longer light, but eternally grey as he continued firing. He didn't even notice the new... wildlife around his home. He just kept on firing.

End Chapter Two; Of Arms and Artifacts

Author's Notes: YES~! Another chapter down. So for those of you who don't actively read Homestuck, which while I do recommend it, both as a story of it's own, and as a slight reference guide to some of the things in this story, the Cruxtruder, the Alchemiter, and Totem Lathe are all some what integral, in that the Cruxtruder emits Cruxite Dowels, and the Kernelsprite, which shall be explained more about next chapter, while the Totem Lathe carves a dowel to equate to the holes punched in a sylladex card, before the Dowel is taken to the Alchemiter, which reads the dowel, and creates the object in question. More on that next chapter, as I take it upon myself to explain it better. I will be switching points of view, bouncing around between characters. I will not however, explain how each of them got to the Medium, which is where the Game takes place, over the next few chapters. That will be a question answered both over time, and only when it's asked about by the other characters. I will accept requests for which character should tell their's next, and for what they should do to react to the current situation, but they may not necessarily be followed. If they are, they shall show up as a command given directly to the Player in question, formatted as so:

== Ride the pony, be the pony.

If a command shows up, it shall be preceeded by two equals signs and a greater than sign, and the command itself shall be in italics. Any other questions may be directed to the Review box below, and with that, I bid you all good day, and until next chapter, live well. Ja Ne.

~Lux Out