He Manipulates

3

Tw- a little blood in the beginning, cutlery violence, I don't think y'all are gonna be too happy with me rn, :'} I am concerned for my well-being- /j

Karl decided to sit and wait for the hunters to leave just to make sure everything went smoothly. Nothing should go wrong, considering he'd edited the book so everything worked out.

He flipped through the book, mumbling as he memorized as much as he could. His eyes were glued to the pages.

Maybe, if he had looked up for even a second, he would have seen the moment when 'MD' stopped tossing drugs into the air talking about someone named 'Mamacita.' If he had been paying just a little more attention to the server he was supposed to be caring for, he would have found the sudden silence and posture of the man strange. Such a drastic change in character. He would have seen as a gloved hand came up to his face and removed the mask he wore with the Mexican flag painted on it with painstaking detail. He would have seen his flat expression. He would have seen his lips curl up into a grin with pointy teeth digging into skin, drawing thick green blood mixed with flecks of black. He would have seen how the smile didn't reach his eyes. How it looked too unnatural to be forced or real. It was... Something else entirely.

If Karl had looked up for even a second, he would have been able to do his job correctly.

~~~

Puffy cursed under her breath and waved the image of the server away. That's what he did wrong-or, at least the first thing. He was right to be suspicious of this character. There was nothing written in the story of anyone with that name, or those initials. There wasn't even a mention of someone like him interacting with anyone in the book, he shouldn't have met the main characters in this story.

The Seer pinched the bridge of her nose. She should have given Karl more knowledge on the Dreamons and how the server books worked. Giving him the bare minimum before such an important first assignment was foolish. This was her fault, he would have noticed this was an inconsistency he should have reported if she had done her job properly. Even if someone is wrongly transported into a server, the book adjusts itself to fit them in regardless of how far along the story is. Sometimes it also adds more pages to accommodate the new person. The one thing the book couldn't adjust on its own to, were the Dreamons. Puffy found it unfair. They could write and steal her Keepers' books but she had no way to kill those creatures permanently! They were like little roaches. Sometimes she wondered if it would be considered immoral to cook up her counterpart, The Egg.

She snorted at the thought of her name. The Egg. It sounded hilarious; at the time The Egg thought it sounded malicious, now she couldn't change it.

It makes Puffy hungry for a nice warm breakfast.

Wait. This is getting off track. The tilted her head towards Drista's doors. "Drista, I need your help!"

The girl floated out, hanging limply above the ground still dressed in her night clothes. She yawned and nodded. "Mhm?"

"Two things, it is the afternoon, you should change." Drista gave no reaction to that. "Can you go get me Karl, please?"

The girl shrugged and nodded. "Why not?" She pulled out a fork and tossed it into the air, muttering a few strange words as it stabilized and pointed left. Drista grinned. "Well done, your locating spell is improving!" Puffy praised with a clap. Drista's grin widened slightly. "Best thing about it, if I want to I can have it impale my target like a tracker." She snickered.

Puffy blinked. "Please don't do that to any of the Keepers, we're short staffed as it is." She shrugged and zipped out the door, following the flying cutlery.

Puffy sighed.

"Teaching her magic was not a good idea, was it?"

~~~

Drista snuck into Karl's room, poking him until he woke. "Ow... Ow! Ow stop that!!" His voice rose in pitch as he became more alert. He swatted at the fork, glaring at the cruel weapon for waking him.

"Puffy wants you." She stated before disappearing in a puff of smoke, leaving only a fork behind.

Karl frowned and sighed. He stared at his clock. Time didn't really exist for them in The In-Between, so everyone's room had a clock for whatever server they were in charge of. He found that the absent presence of time made for many confusing conversations. Different servers had different time measurements as well. Some servers had both day and night, while others only had one of the two. He realized quickly that it was just best to stay away from trying to explain time in another server to other Keepers.

~~~
(I'm going to use this ' ° ' to signify when Puffy is looking into the past and all)

°

Karl slipped on his hoodie. Right now in his server it was around six in the morning. He grumbled to himself and checked the events calendar. Today was the day Michael would be killed.

Michael was Tubbo and Ranboo's adopted son. He felt sorry for all in the family, but he had to follow the book. If he tried to rewrite that, the book wouldn't understand. Deaths weren't something you were allowed to change. Minor events yes, maybe he could ask Puffy about changing them. Like if Tommy's pet spider were to get hit with a healing potion and injure itself but not die. He heard there was a specific department you could take your requests to, and the people that worked there would properly rewrite the story if Puffy approved the change.

"Properly..." He murmured to himself as he made his way to the server room. Had he messed anything up when he crossed things out in the original book?

He shook his head as he entered the large tower, staring up the stairs. He felt bad for the Keepers that had servers in the hundreds or thousands.

He turned to the first server in the room and closed his eyes before stepping through the portal.

He'd find out soon enough if his actions brought sour consequences.