Chuubostuck/Book One

A Chuubostuck plot summary.

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Chapter One: Let’s Play A Game (Posts #1 - 123)

The day is Sunday, July 14th, 2013. A large number of children have gathered to play a game: SBURB. Thousands of people in town are trying to get access to first-release copies. Nine of them are a group of friends.

In Old Molder, Ayumu Mori has two goals: explore his gargoyle-filled mansion, and convince his friends to play SBURB. He sends out a message to that effect. Then he goes to get his mail, which has frustratingly been left in a hole in a tree by the house instead of in a mail box. While attempting to recover it, he has to find the key, and then strife with his Butler, who still doesn’t know that Ayumu dropped out of School several years ago. Outside, he discovers that his nemesis, a red squirrel named The Baron, is making a nest out of a pair of packages he’s received. The Baron attaches itself to Ayumu’s face, and he has to literally beat it off with a stick. Upon doing so, he discovers that his SBURB server disc has become scratched. More importantly, he sees that the SBURB symbol is one that he has been seeing in his nightmares...

In Horizon, Fitzwilliam Gerald, a boy who is half-ghost, breaks into Principal Entropy’s office to steal back his confiscated copy of the game. He succeeds, but Entropy spots him. After a brief but very intense interaction, he manages to escape. Unsure of himself, he gradually fades into the Ghost World, before running smack into his friend Richard, who convinces him to return to School to steal even MORE copies of the game…

Also in Horizon, the genius mad scientist Lilith Ivanov tries to clean her way out of her room to retrieve her own copies, after choking down a disasterous breakfast prepared by her mildly incompetent robot butler. And on the edges of Arcadia, Matt Ritter tries to avoid his athletic uncle and reach the shops to collect his pre-order. He narrowly succeeds, outrunning his uncle and, gasping for breath, heading down the street.

In Fortitude, the shrine maiden Lily Watanabe rushes to finish her chores, and hurries to Arcadia to try and buy a copy of the game. There, she meets with Riley McArthur, a daughter of heroes, who hopes that SBURB will help her connect with her friends in a normal way. Riley has baked Lily a cake for her birthday, and the two pause to eat it and talk about life before rushing off to Space Ingamers, where they find a massive line. Riley convinces the line to let her and Lily through so that she can get a game, impressing and frustrating Lily, and then learns there’s only one copy for sale. Lily lets Riley have it.

Lilith and Matt run into each other, meeting in person for the first time, and Matt is instantly sucked into Lilith’s schemes, joining her on a trip to the game store, Game Guys. There, they find a massive line. Forcing their way through, they learn that the game is already sold out, and after briefly considering a life of crime, decide to look elsewhere, hitting up hardware stores for a new wrench while they wait. They discuss Lilith’s rivalry with Riley, and arrange to meet up.

After hopping across some rooftops, Riley and Lily spot Matt and Lilith, and go down to meet them. Lilith immediately challenges Riley for possession of her SBURB disc, while Matt and Lily chat...

And in the intermission, many years away, a Disheveled Drifter sails a boat across an endless sea. Discovering a scrap of printed paper on which is printed the beginning of a walkthrough for SBURB (as written by someone with the pesterhandle apocryphalConsolation), he changes his course in hopes of finding an island.

Chapter Two: A Confusion of Objectives (Posts #124 - 290)

It remains Sunday. Ayumu, game discs in hand, slips out of home to join his friends, who are largely gathering in Arcadia. There, Matt and Lily stroll away from Lilith and Riley, who are locked in combat for Riley's disc. Riley wins the battle, successfully suplexing Lilith and reclaiming her discs, and then she and Lilith go to the Arcadia train station to meet up with Ayumu.

Ayumu pauses in his walking to deliver a mis-addressed package that was supposed to go to a girl named Amber Mack. He arrives at her home just in time to see it obliterated by a meteor. Not as surprised as he should be, he quickly informs the others. Riley decides to race home to check on her family, while Lilith decides to investigate the meteor crash site. She notices that there isn't any debris from the house, which seems to have vanished entirely. Ayumu, deciding that he needs to see what package this presumably-dead girl was going to receive, opens it and discovers that it is actually a glitter bomb, which explodes in his face. There is also a mostly-ruined note from the prankster. The two of them make for Lilith's lab to analyze their results.

In Horizon, Richard and Fitz (well, mostly Richard) hatch a plan to steal more discs from Entropy II, and depart for School on a mission of theft. Fitz swings by his house to drop off the discs he already stole (belonging to an E-I-I), before joining Richard outside School. The simple plan is that Richard will distract the Principal with a well-placed surprise bullet, and then Fitz will sneak in and steal the discs while Richard is fleeing. The first part of the plan goes off without a hitch, and Fitz recovers several marked copies of SBURB and slips away, but before Richard can escape, Principal Entropy II discovers him. Entropy ultimately recruits Richard to help him in an unspecified task.

Matt and Lily return to Matt's home, to recover Lily's birthday present. Their task is made more difficult by the need to avoid Matt's Uncle, who is on the roof fixing the TV antenna. Along the way, Lily has a phone discussion with Ayumu, about the death of her family and the mysterious letter from her supposedly-deceased mother that she received afterwards. The two manage to recover Lily's present, along with various potentially useful items.

Back on Little Island, Riley takes a moment to relax and calm down before racing over to her house. There, she learns that her brother Timmy has wandered off, and then collects her heroing gear and races back out to help her friends.

As several people converge on the train station, Ayumu gets his friend Rameus on speakerphone, and has a conversation with him, Lilith and Riley. Ayumu tries to convince his friends that the game is critical to their survival, to mixed reactions. They agree to meet up at Lilith's lab. Riley breaks off from the others long enough to buy a computer and assorted goods (including a Power Glove - thanks, Arcadia), before meeting Ayumu and Lilith back at the lab. Rameus attempts to arrive, but is side-tracked by police, fish-vendors, and train conductors.

In the lab, Ayumu and Lilith prepare for Lily's birthday party, neither very effectively. Lilith also studies the meteor, and deduces that it seems to have arrived not from orbit, but through some other delivery method. Then Ayumu realizes that he needs to be in his house for the game to function, and just as Riley arrives he races off with her to his mansion, to get into the game. Riley has left her own discs at home, but borrows Ayumu's server disc and Rameus's game codes to act as his server. Lilith, now alone again, sets to work building a laser capable of shooting down falling meteors, and a hot air balloon to get it to the roof of School.

In Arcadia, Matt gives Lily her present, prompting a very-nearly romantic moment, before the two go to join the others. Along the way, they meet a dramatic guy named Donny Dean, with whom Lily flirts. Ultimately, she invites him to come along to her birthday party, and although he has somewhere to be, he agrees to come for a little while. Matt takes the opportunity to go to sleep and visit a magical golden city, Prospit, where he chats with a Watchful Shopkeeper.

Upon arriving at School, Lilith absolutely flips the heck out, and starts threatening local game shops for more copies of SBURB, unaware that Fitz is already acquiring them from downstairs and is coming up to meet her. He is slightly delayed by having to avoid a hall monitor with a parasol, but eventually arrives. Lilith leaves him in command of the laser while she goes to collect the bounty from her game-shop-blackmail, allowing him to direct it at the approaching meteors instead of at the city. Unfortunately, just after Lilith departs, Anya Drago arrives. She is the Vampire Queen of the student body, a SEED member, and a hall monitor, and an old rival of Lilith's. Fitz attempts to heroically tell her off, and manages to delay her long enough to let him blow up a meteor, but ultimately succeeds in heroically agreeing to let her blow up meteors with the laser while he holds her parasol.

In Old Molder, Riley equips herself with a spear, which she dubs Starsplitter, and connects to Ayumu. After a few mis-steps, she successfully deploys his alchemy equipment, and she and Ayumu set up his house for his entry. To their surprise, the video game is actually able to affect the real world. Riley also accidentally sends most of the mansion's toilets flying into the air in a plumbing disaster. This triggers a time-wasting but hilarious conversation with Lilith, as a result of which Ayumu trips and sends a cloud of glitter into his kernel. This, along with a sword, creates his Sparklesword sprite-weapon.

While Riley finishes preparations, Ayumu contacts Matt and explains that the ghosts of his deceased potential future selves have been contacting him in his dreams with advice. Matt, remembering his golden city, believes him. Ayumu then contacts Lilith, Lily and Rameus, trying to figure out where they all are and how close they are to entry. Lilith intends to study the old Watanabe Shrine to follow up on an older theory, and Lily promises to bring Matt and her new friend to School as soon as they swing past the current Watanabe Shrine.

Rameus pledges to arrive soon. He does not.

Elsewhere, in the sewers, the last would-be member of the group, David Gudmunsson, meets with a young Delivery Damsel by the name of Felicia, who helps him search for a crying child that he accidentally swept into the sewers with his modus. They find the child at the local Frog Temple, and while Felicia escorts the kid to safety, David attempts to recover a package up at the top of the temple, only to be attacked by a red squirrel as it leaps out of the temple's mystical lotus. This action delays him sufficiently that he fails to return to the surface in time to join the others.

In his home, Ayumu creates his Entry Item, a black crystal ball. As he reaches to smash it, a meteor flies down towards his house. Riley, acting quickly, steps outside and throws a spear, delaying the meteor by precious seconds and allowing Ayumu to enter the game.

In the second intermission, a mysterious figure called apocryphalConsolation engages in a pesterchat with Donny, and is not impressed by his attempt to shirk his SBURB-related duties. She then contacts Felicia, the mail lady, only to learn that she is also unavailable, but suggests contacting 'Sam'. When AC does so, she learns that he is busy trying to recover his game discs from a giant spider, leading to a minor freakout.

Chapter Three: The War For Town (Posts #291-412)

Riley, after naming her spear Star Splitter, recovers a mysterious black box from the meteor wreckage, messages Lilith and makes arrangements to enter the game with Lily. She returns home and starts helping Ayumu, who she can see on her screen. Lilith, for her part, makes her way to the Watanabe Shrine, to meet up with Matt and Lily and get started on getting Riley into the game properly. She then goes to study the previous Watanabe Shrine, mysterious destroyed by a meteor when Lily was young. While she does this, Matt runs interference with Lily's grandfather by stocking up on candy for Lily's birthday. Lily, overcome with emotion, ends up kissing Donny, inadvertently convincing him to stick around for a while while she searches for a MYSTERIOUS LETTER from her mother.

Within the Medium, Ayumu explores the fog-shrouded world now surrounding his home. He discovers that he now has a game sylladex, and that his butler seems to have entered the game as well. He then gets into a fight with a dangerous SPARKLE IMP, an Underling that exists to fight players. Riley provides assistance, while becoming distracted by her mysterious box.

At School, Fitzwilliam and Richard are having their own problems. Richard is recruited by Principal Entropy to help him with a problem, and vanishes in his company. Fitz runs interference with Anya Drago, giving her access to Lilith's giant laser for meteor-destroying purposes. As a result, a game store is not destroyed as promised. This frees Fitz to join Lilith.

David returns home from the sewers, promising to install the game he recovered from Felicia Wu, a member of the SEED Program. He is never heard from again, and is presumed killed by falling meteors.

Lilith announces to the others that there are two SBURB games running (at least), and sets about plotting a cunning heist to recover the last needed SBURB copy for her group of friends. She is joined by Fitz, Riley and Matt. The heist involves clown suits, defense grids, packing tape, and wild success, and ends with the acquisition of an SBURB Skaianet Ultimate Edition, containing game discs, a strategy guide, a rare DREAM MODUS, and a statue of a copper lich signed by her grandfather, Pavel Ivanov! This causes a minor Lilith breakdown, which Riley helps to resolve with a long hug. Riley and Lilith depart for her lab.

Back in the Medium, Ayumu successfully kills his imp, inadvertently prototyping it into his Sparklesword. The now-speaking sword shares information about the game - how to create objects, the need to prototype kernels, the backstory of the Medium and the path to start the game properly. He shares all of this information with Riley and Lilith, while also giving Lilith a bit of a teasing hard time (Lilith takes this badly.) Riley tells Lilith that she thinks Ayumu has a crush on her.

Lily uses Donny as a distraction for her grandfather, which works VERY WELL. She then sneaks off to Horizon to meet up with Riley and Lilith, to join them in searching for the hub of the SBURB sessions in the hope of saving town. They find a mysterious underground tunnel linking Lilith's lab to an underground computer hub, which is protected by hungry ogres. Ogres who are in the middle of a fight with a Rider! Lily promptly tries to attack the Rider for stealing her mother, and Riley and Lilith have to hold her back.

After a brief conversation, the Rider tells Lily that her mother was killed by "the King", not by the Riders, and that his goal is the end of Town. He and Riley end up fighting the ogres, and then after doing so they turn on each other. The Rider is stronger, although he suggests that Riley will one day be stronger still. He takes her mysterious box, opens it, and is very surprised when a squirrel leaps out and attacks his face. Lily, Lilith and Riley take the chance to escape.

Fitz goes back to the roof to meet with Anya, and is called down to speak with Principal Entropy. Anya informs him that the Riders are trying to destroy the world again, and that SBURB is directly involved.

Matt, meanwhile, goes home to get set up so that Ayumu can bring him into the game, leaving Fitz to return to School. He carefully stuffs all of his sports gear in his closet to avoid prototyping it, selects his baseball bat as a weapon, and starts running his program. Ayumu accidentally wrecks his room, and is attacking by imps before he can fix it, resulting in all of Matt's rugby gear falling into the kernelsprite. He manages to use a baseball to break his entry item, a balloon, entering the Medium just as it pops, and moments before a quite large meteor takes out several blocks of Arcadia. Matt arrives safely in the Land of Mud and Frogs.