Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

XXX

Recently there had been a rise in mob spawns during the night. Steve’s village was one of the unlucky ones that every time the Sun had set had to deal with waves of monsters emerging from the darkness with the simple goal of destroying every human in their way.

Everybody knew that it was caused by a glitch in the code. A mistake in the building block of the Overworld but only a select few were born with the ability to see and interact with code in its purest form, those people were called Coders. Most of them lived in the Capital, shielded from the dangers of the dimension, working directly under the emperor of humankind - Sol. Sometimes he sent out his people to deal with glitches but very rarely, usually not even bothering with small settlements away from the Capital.

Steve sighed heavily as he laid down to rest on some hay standing next to one of the houses. He watched how the Sun slowly moved across the sky in the direction of the horizon. Soon night will fall and as always, everyone stands up to fight against attacking mobs. Even children like him were given swords or bows to help with the defense. 

But there is also another thing. Some people claimed to see a white eyed man in the forest. Most interpret this as a sign of impending tragedy but Steve didn’t want to believe gossip just like that. Besides who with even bits of sanity remaining would wander dark forest most likely brimming with mobs at night? 

So he decided to check the forest out, before the Sun sets and the moon rises. He stood up from his resting place and made his way to the gate. It wasn’t being guarded during the day as everybody, even guards are preparing for the night, so sneaking out turned out to be a cake walk. Besides, children without parents obviously were paid considerably less attention than those with families. If Steve wanted to disappear nobody would really care.

White eyed stranger should be wandering the dark forest in the north. Steve walked in that direction, a torch in one hand and a stone sword in the other. Other than that his inventory had some basic items like bread, dirt blocks to build up, stone pickaxe worn off by the time and excessive usage and wood, in case he had to craft something.

Surprisingly the forest turned out to be surprisingly empty. No evidence of any mobs wandering around.

How strange. Usually places like this are filled with monsters, hiding in the shadows of trees awaiting the moment when the last rays of sunlight disappear so they can freely go out.

Maybe there was something going on here.

Still, undeterred he continued forward.

Eventually he came across a small clearing with someone standing, unmoving in the middle.

Overall the whole area looked very nice. Nice enough that once Steve grew up he would build himself a house in a place like this. Trees acted as natural barrier from the outside world and they were far enough to allow light to pass through and allowed some more plants to grow.

On the other side there was a random, tall guy looking away. The child could only make out a vague shape that was lean, almost gaunt and long, limbs. It was the best time to bring out his sword. 

“Hello?”

Maybe this was a lost adventurer who stopped by and people were ones who twisted his looks as they never approached him.

No response.

Creeped out, Steve thinks if he should really go out and speak to the man. He could turn out to be some kind of sociopath that kidnaps people and tortures them in his basement. But even then curiosity turned out to be stronger. 

There is a reason after all why people say that curiosity killed the cat.

“Are you lost?”

He inquired, walking up to the man who still was turned away, doing strange gestures with his hands. Now the kid could make out some more details. The man had tousled brown hair that at the ends almost turned black. He wore thick gloves adorned, just like the rest of his dark robes, with golden ornaments. 

So maybe this was somebody from the Capital. Some rich lord who wanted to feel the thrill of adventure but then there should be somebody else nearby.

Then Steve focused more on the hands, while one looked normal, albeit the bony fingers seen through tight gloves were a bit creepy it was the other that got his attention. The left hand was twisted, hanging down under a strange angle, twitching violently from time to time.

“You are hurt.”

Steve murmurs. This finally snaps the man out of his trace. In a single moment his neck twists and cracks as he turns to face the child. 

Boy steps back. 

That looked like his neck just snapped but he stood as if it was the most normal thing ever.

White, empty eyes blankly started at Steve’s blue ones. 

It remained like that for some time before Steve finally broke off the eye contact, guessing that the creature wasn’t going to hurt him. 

So it did turn out that people were right and there was white-eyed something wandering the forest but it didn’t seem aggressive, at all. Maybe it just needed some help with the hand.

“Hey. Can I see your hand? I know some things about first aid” Steve tried and surprisingly, after a slight tilt of his head, the creature twisted its strange hand to reach out with it to the child, while the other one continued to do those strange gestures.

“Hmmm.” Steve caught the twitching palm as delicately as possible. It really looked like those were claws. As he looks closer something strange starts to happen. Colours begin to blur just to eventually disappear into green, red and blue strings woven closely together. Strangely enough somewhere where the wrist is most of the lines are red, the hand and rest of the body being mostly green and blue. 

Deciding that it might be the problem, Steve taps red strings. They start to shake before a tiny creature emerges. It looks kind of like a spider but red with a strange black dot on its abdomen that looks almost like a tiny Sun. It shrieks and tries to bite the child but he just squashes it between his fingers.

Now he can only watch as bloody red slowly shifts into almost neon green. 

Boy blinks and everything comes back to normal.

The creature continues to stare at him with his white eyes. Eventually it looks at its hand. It moves it a bit, almost like it’s testing how well it is fixed. Apparently satisfied it reached out into the folds of his robes, taking out what appeared to be a bracelet made of ten beads shaped like red hearts. Then he drops it onto Steve’s open palm.

The boy could only watch in shock as the bracelet all by itself started to slide onto his wrist and seemingly fused into his skin. It left behind something akin to a tattoo of ten red hearts.

Strangely enough it doesn’t hurt.

He looks up to the creature but it has already returned to doing whatever it had been doing earlier with his hands.

“Can I at least know your name sir?” Steve finally asks.

Silence once again replies to him. But the man gestures to the sky, urging Steve to look up. Child's eyes widen in realization. The Sun is almost setting. It’s time to go back.

“Ah! I gotta go. Goodbye.” Steve almost yells as he sprints back into his village, leaving a mysterious stranger to his own devices.

XXX

Only after arriving at the village Steve realises that there is another item that suddenly appeared in his inventory. A small piece of paper with some strange runes written on it saying:

[ℸ ̣ ⍑ᔑリꖌ  ||𝙹⚍.]

-H

Even stranger was the fact that this night mob spawn rates returned to normal and monsters were considerably less aggressive than before. 

Steve attributed both things to the presence of the man he met in the forest. Hopefully they would meet again tommorow.

Chapter Text

XXX

Steve groaned loudly as a panicked man ran into his workshop. He wore iron armor decorated with the Empire's insignia, soon after him came two others, who looked pretty similar. At last came a tall woman with long fiery hair braided into a ponytail and green eyes staring directly at him.

The first man hit the counter with his fist, hard and Steve had to stop himself from rolling his eyes at the rude gesture. Really every single time people from the Capital visited his small abode they always behaved like they owned the entire thing.

“Bow your head Overworlder, for the princess of humankind stands before you.”

Alex, is her name. She visits often enough that Steve can easily recognise her. Usually she comes accompanied by some guards to ask for help with a rogue HERO murdering everything it comes across. After so many incidents he thought that the Empire would get smarter and would stop screwing with Universe management  but apparently it was too hard to leave them alone.

Sometimes he really hoped that he wouldn’t have to deal with humans ever. But what could he do?

“Hey there Alex. The prices had risen.” He starts smiling at the woman. She scoffs but ultimately walks up to the counter herself. 

“There is another… incident. I want it resolved fast.” She murmurs while guards stare at Steve for daring to talk to the princess herself with such ease, without any respect.

“Let me guess. Someone tried to hack them and accidentally activated defensive mode?”

The sigh that comes as a reply is enough for him to deduce that that’s the exact case. Most likely humans screwed something up real bad and wanted to get the management to clean the mess up. Annoyingly those people were not aware that any unauthorized tap into the code makes the HERO system go berserk and kill everything it comes across. 

“Very well. Give me coordinates. As usual I get paid after the job is done.”

Alex’s shoulders visibly relax as she leans on the counter. Slowly sliding him a piece of paper with a bunch of numbers written on it. It looks like the affected area is pretty close by. Away from the Capital because obviously they would experiment away from their riches. Steve takes the paper and reads it quickly.

“It’ll be done in a few days.”

With that he turns away and without saying goodbye he tries to retreat to the magazine to fetch needed items but is stopped by one of the guards. A young man with blond hair and hazel eyes looks angrily at him.

“How dare you treat the princess like that.” He says slowly, trying to appear dangerous but Steve really didn’t pay him any mind.

“Alex. Can you tell your servant to back off and allow me to do my work… Unless he wants to deal with the berserk HERO by himself. Albeit I would personally advise against that.”
He calmly says, not changing his tone in the slightest. This only aggravated the man who got ready to draw his diamond sword but was quickly stopped by Alex.

“Stand down.” She simply states and looks at the guard who under her scrutiny retreats, still eyeing Steve. “Sorry about that. They are not used to dealing with outsiders.”

Man nobs and smiles weakly. Obviously that’s the case. Those who spend most of their lives in the safety of the walls that surround the Capital wouldn’t understand people much more used to dealing with mobs every night and having to survive in harsh but beautiful biomes of the Overworld.

“No problem.” With that he walks to the magazine. It’s a small wooden room filled with double chests, each one with a sign saying what is stored inside. Some people from the Empire would kill to get even some of the items that Steve had stashed off here. Stacks of diamond blocks from his mining trips underground, whole chest willed with golden apples and even a single enchanted golden apple. In this era they are so rare that even one of those is worth a fortune.  However to him it had a different purpose. He hid it in his inventory along with some other items, like wood, redstone torches and a stack of golden apples. 

After years of dealing with HERO’s of all kinds he learned the best ways to calm them down enough to safely check their code without being brutally ripped apart. He learned that the hard way. 

“Time to go HERO hunting then.”

XXX

Funnily enough it turned out that this HERO was a Herobrine. For whatever reason those were ones that humans screwed with the most often. Now Steve sat on a small hill watching how a single humanoid practically burns the entire forest into a crisp. There among burnt tree trunks human can see a village, or more accurately what remained of it after the massacre. 

In all honesty he felt the worst for the mobs that were caught in the crossfire. But what could he do? He can’t find every berserk HERO in the Overworld. 

“Hey there.”

He finally calls out, gaining the attention of the HERO. Its head snaps in his direction, features eerily calm, almost expressionless. White eyes shot directly through him. He can feel that it’s looking into his code, deciding whether or not he’s a threat or not. Using his chance Steve takes out the enchanted golden apple. 

“Look what I have here. Do you want an apple?”

Creature fully focuses on the golden fruit, eventually landing in front of Steve. But the human quickly changes the item in his hands. Replacing the enchanted one with the normal golden version.

“Sorry about that but I only have one enchanted. Still you can eat as many golden ones as you want.”

The HERO lets out dissatisfied hiss similar to those that creepers make but it ultimately accepts the apples and starts eating them. Great now that it calmed down he can get down to work.

Steve blinks and the familiar sensation of his sight switching up to look at the pure code enters his chest. Interestingly it seems that the red code is located somewhere between the ribs. He taps it and as usual a bug crawls out  but this one seems surprisingly big with two mouths. One clasped its mandibles at Steve while the other held tight to the strings of the code. 

It’s pretty unusual behaviour from the bugs. But as usual human quickly yanked it away from the code and glanced at it. A familiar sun symbol adorned its abdomen. He sighed before putting it inside a glass container. 

Soon red turns into healthy green. Thank Universe that the management decided to arm HEROs with self-regeneration, it made life so much easier.

[System Reboot]

Steve blinked and let the colours fill his sight once again. HERO loomed over him, its head slightly titted as it watched him.

“Better?”

He asks, not really expecting an answer. HEROs aren’t usually made with the ability to speak. Many of them don't even have a mind of their own, unless their mission involves mixing with humans or mobs.

Creature let out a shriek. One that Steve decided to classify as a positive answer. Good.

“I’m going to stabilize you. Come with me, or teleport to me whichever you fancy more.”

He murmured and made his way back to his workshop.

XXX

Strangely, it turned out that Alex waited for him in the building. She eyed Herobrine looming beside him. 

“Are you sure it won’t kill us?” She inquired, but didn’t make any moves to escape or do anything more really.

“It won’t.” Steve countered as he quickly moved past her. “What are you still doing here anyways?”

Woman huffed. “You know why. To offer you a place in the Capital.”

“So you must already know that I’m going to revise.” Man murmurs as he picks up a small command block. Then he turns to the HERO. “Open up.”

It snaps its neck in awkward nod before its chest split open. Alex’s eyes widen in shock as she sees an empty cavity inside, guarded by the ribs. Strangely enough even the bone starts to move as the sternum cracks and each ribs split.

“Here you go.” Steve murmurs, obviously used to such sights, as he puts the command block inside. Once it’s inside everything closes up. “Now you are free to go.”

It moves its arms a bit and then teleports away without another word.

“Your gift would be really useful to the Empire.” She starts, slowly, carefully, aware that Steve absolutely despises this subject.

The man rolls his blue eyes before starting to browse through one of the chests. “The only gift I have is code sight and respawn, nothing else. Now you tell me.” He reaches out into his inventory just to show the glass container with a live bug still wiggling inside, snapping its mandibles. “I’ll give you some advice. As a friend.”

His eyes visibly became more serious.

“If humans won’t stop screwing with Code, they will eventually piss off some very powerful individuals.” His mouth closes just to open moments later. “The Capital is a cage, a very comfortable one but a cage nonetheless."

Alex breathes out heavily, suddenly tired. “I won’t leave my people behind.”

Steve shrugs. “The offer still stands. You might find it shocking how beautiful wild Overworld truly is.”

“Beautiful and dangerous.”

A shadow passes through Steve’s expression. A memory of the past long gone. Or maybe something else. “Indeed.” He finally says, voice unusually distant.

Before she manages to inquire, doors burst wide open and guards from before stand in the entrance. 

“Princess, we should return to the Capital. Everybody is waiting for you.”

“See? Can’t do anything on your own.” Steve whispers to her ear before quickly disappearing in the shadows of his magazine.

Woman shakes her head and turns to her companions.

“Princess. Is the monster-”

One of them starts but she quiets him down with a flick of her hand.

“Don't worry about that."

She looks into the doorframe where he disappeared and smiles softly.

Maybe he was right about something yet…

Fixing HEROs… First human in recorded history who managed to interact with those etheral creatures and lived to tell the tale… She needed to give some thought to things he had said. Recently she started feeling like she didn’t belong in the Empire. But for now she had to return and tell father that the berserk HERO had been neutralised.

Chapter Text

XXX

Alex watched how Steve moved around his workshop doing something with come cubes. From time to time he stopped over the crafting table making items. She tilted her head and continued to observe. Instantly she could tell that something was wrong with the other human. Usual snarky behaviour was nowhere to be seen, now he seemed to be almost stressed. But he deals with HEROs almost daily, she couldn’t imagine what would touch him like that.

“What’s up?” Her voice cut through to him. Blue eyes lifted up to look into hers. “A bad HERO hm?”

He looks down, awkwardly. He has no idea how to reply to her question. 

“Steve. I can see that something is up with you.” She murmured softly. Whatever was up, she would understand, like Steve did with her own situation as a princess. 

“I-” He starts, slowly, collecting words he wanted to use in his mind. He was careful. “have met my… boss.”

“You have a boss?” She asks, very curious. While she knew that he repaired damaged HEROs and made sure that they were operating normally, without the whole ‘maul everything at sight’ thing, she had no idea that he was working for someone. After all, who randomly threw resources at things that, while upheld balance of the code, could easily turn into weapons of war at moments notice.

“Yeeesss ... .Multiple even. But it’s the first time one of them met up with me in person.” He scratched the back of his head before continuing, quieter this time. “...If that can be called a meeting in person.”

“What do you mean by that? What happened?” She pressed further, wanting to know more worrying for her acquaintance. 

Steve glances away, evading her green eyes that bore into him with unsettling intensity.
“I- can’t explain it, sorry.” He finally murmurs, admitting that he ultimately didn’t find fitting words that could describe whatever he went through recently.

Alex would not leave this at that. “Just start from the beginning.” She pressed further. “How did you even end up fixing HEROs? You never told me after all.”

“Eh. I accidentally fixed a HERO that worked on mob spawns near my village and it apparently gave me respawn and code sight. And snitched about my existence to some…individuals that I would prefer to be clear from through my entire life.” He explains with very little detail.

“You really couldn’t distinguish a HERO from a coder?” The woman inquires, but he waves her off.

“Not everybody is born into a family with access to school. Besides HEROs at least help with the code management in contrast to the coders who spend their days in the empire doing whatever.”

“Ah.” She closes her mouth knowing very well that this argument for her was the lost case. 

“Anyways. As I grew I came across more and more HEROs. Once, I was fully grown up, a fully winged woman visited me and gave me some gifts with the directive that I should fix any HERO I come across. I suppose that’s when I started working for them. Eventually I learned to distinguish different types of HEROs and developed more ways to deal with them without dying too much.”

The man finished his story looking at her reaction. 

Alex’s face soured, thinking over the part where he mentioned winged woman. That fitted awfully well with a myth that besides Overworld and the Nether that humans recently started to colonise there exist two other dimensions: The End and The Aether but their existence never had been officially confirmed. Winged women, or as the mythos called them - valkyries supposedly were meant to be one of mobs native to the Aether. 

And Aether had been connected with most of the beliefs about gods that the Empire had been teaching about. Could the individuals that Steve had been talking about be gods that humans and mobs alike prayed to in times of need?

“Okay, so now tell me what happened during the meeting with the ‘boss’ of yours.” Se ultimately says and he just sighs.

“Look. I literally cannot explain that. It will be better if I allow you to see my memories through the code… but be wary. . .You’ll feel what I did then.” He warned her before summoning a small panel where he started to write something into the code.

“Coders can share their memories like that?”

“Yeah. I suppose they just don’t share it too openly.” He shrugs it off. “So do you still want to see? I’ll only tell you that it will hurt a lot.”

Alex nods in confirmation. She wanted to know what moved Steve so much even if it had to hurt. In the end it couldn’t be that bad.

“But-”

“Just show me. I want to know.”

Giving up he lets the code run things he wove into the code. At first the woman feels kind of nauseous, like somebody was violently shaking her head, but eventually everything starts to blur together. Her eyes close.

XXX

[1480 year of Sol]

Alex wakes up feeling much heavier, she must be in Steve’s body now. Even as a ghost she can sense strange tingling from the heart tattoos he once showed her. It must be the code responsible for respawn ability. 

They lay down on bed, tired. There is also the sensation of one of the arms withering away under the effect. He drank some milk from the bucket but it didn’t help in the slightest. 

“Damn it all.” Steve groans as he puts his healthy arm across his forehead. Alex knows that now he is just waiting to die and respawn. It looks like whatever he dealt with, which most likely was berserk HERO cursed him with a withering effect and for whatever reason it couldn’t be removed by normal means. 

As time passes the pain becomes more prominent, woman can feel it with her own awareness. The man in the memory curls up and scowls. “Ow.”

Eventually something else happens, a particular heaviness fills the air, the sensation is akin to breathing underwater, losing the air very quickly. Then a presence manifests. It causes her mind to instinctively recoil. Awareness stopped to fidget fearing that ITS eyes would fall onto her.

Steve’s head is forcefully snapped to face the direction of the wall. In the moonlight the shadow of the flower pot grew and moved in such an unnatural way that for a second Alex’s brain couldn’t follow it. At last it formed into something vaguely humanoid with white dots of light staring at them.

It felt like under its scrutiny her entire existence would fall apart, forgotten in the vastness of the existence. The shadow detached from the wall. Its gravelly cold fingers cusp their head. Its touch is painful, ice forming on the skin. 

“ᓵ⚍∷╎𝙹⚍ᓭ…”

Just its voice almost makes Alex’s soul leave not her memory. It’s quiet as a whisper but also loud in a way that it can be heard in every corner of the Universe. There is strange raspiness to it and it’s only human feature in it. An echo follows every letter as if hundreds of other beings repeated exactly the same thing.

Then it thankfully lets go, but not for long, their head is once again snapped but this time in another direction, to look at a withering arm, long bony fingers curl around their wrist. Fear makes the world blurry. It easily twists and they open their mouth to scream. Piercing pain travels through their temporary shared system kicking fight or flight response into full motion. They want to open their mouth to yell, beg, curse or do anything, really but fail miserably. Their body is stuck in this exact position until it allows some kind of movement, or forces it.

After that comes a quick yank and their arm is ripped off, unnaturally unmoving.

The creature brings it closer to its face to investigate it but soon its palm closes, crushing the withering limb. It shatters into hundreds of tiny cubes that float lazily around the entity. Soon enough another sensation blooms in their chest, strings of pure code slither out of the wound, almost lazily. The separate strings are eventually woven together by the clawed fringers of the creature, forming brand new limb. After just a few minutes that felt like eternity to the two, the work is done. The whole arm had been rebuilt. 
Then the claw cuts through the flesh of the torso, creating some grotesque scars in the middle. 

Alex and Steve take in a breath and prepare for pain but it doesn’t come, quite contrary. The presence leisurely retreats to wherever it came from. Finally allowing two minds occupying the same body to move. Their first reaction was a scream, loud, piercing scream.

And Alex opens her green eyes.

XXX

She quickly stands up and almost collides with Steve. Tears streamed down her face, she couldn’t stop them. Her entire body was shaking violently. 

“What was that thing?”

She just asks. Now she understands why he couldn’t explain to her what happened. That was straight up unexplainable. 

“One of my bosses.” 

He replies, handing her a bottle of fresh, cold water that she gladly takes. It works well on her dry throat, helping her to regain at least some calmness of mind.

“How in the Nether can you work for… THAT thing?”

He just shakes his head, helping her to stand up and leading her to sit on the close by crafting table. “I did some research. You know why HEROs are called that?”

“Of course. They are called after Herobrine, the fallen god who once attempted to destroy humankind.” She replied and took a deep breath in. “Why are you asking?”

“Well… HEROs are technically pieces of… the original, the one who I saw.”

“That. Was. The. Herobrine? THAT. Herobrine?” Alex feels like she is about to faint. The evil god from the mythos is real. She needed to warn everybody.

“Yeah… What you saw there was… uh. How to put that. He tried to be friendly.” He murmured, glancing away from her.

“Steve. That THING almost: suffocated you, nearly snapped your neck twice, ripped off your arm and crushed it, clawed at you, almost flash frozen you when it touched you. Really this doesn’t strike me as friendly behaviour.” She instantly counters him, recalling most prominent feelings she felt when reliving his memories. 

The man embraced her and let her hold him tightly as she breathed in and out. “I will tell you more some other time but for now you should rest, a lot.” He led her to a small, guest bedroom. It was nicely furnished with some chests, a furnace, craftingtable, banners hanging above the bed and a nice look outside of the window.

“Steve.” She caught his sleeve looking him in the eyes, determination he always associated her with returning. “Do you mind Herobrine hurting you?”

He stopped in his tracks. This is a very good question but one he already has an answer to. “A little bit… But I’ll tell you something. After he gave me those scars HEROs are considerably less aggressive. Maybe he just wanted to give a blessing but it came out like this.”

Alex shook her head in disbelief. “You really give those creature a credit of the doubt far too large for me.”

“In contrast to humans they did help me… Even if in their own unhinged way.” His shoulders dropped as he glanced outside of the window. “I mean he is something so much different to the point where our minds can barely comprehend his presence without melting. The difference itself might be the problem.”

Alex found herself pondering those words. It would be so easy for Herobrine to just snap his fingers and kill Steve but he didn’t.  It didn’t go along with the legend that he's a force of pure destruction that wants nothing but for chaos and death to reign in every dimension.

But for now she found herself too drained to care about things like that.