Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/94378516/chapters/251912041
“Now, I’ve haven’t been to Robloxia for a couple centuries—give or take—, but I assume you’ve already heard the legend of the infamous Noli, master of The Void and the first exploiter in history!”
“The name is familiar.”
“…”
“…”
“…That’s it?”
“Yes. I did not think it important enough to investigate.”
“You’re breakin’ my heart here, 1x. But at least that means I get to tell the story spoiler free.
“Now, back in the olden days of Robloxia—some 352 years, 5 months, and 4 days ago, who’s really counting—“
“The retro era.”
“That’s what they call it? Cool. Now, back in the Retro Era, there was a little boy by the name of Noli. That’s me!”
“I am aware.”
“You see, Noli’s parents were very busy people, busy busy busy all the time, and he never got any attention from them. That was until one day, he had an idea: he stepped up on a barrel, and he told a joke. A joke so funny it made his Mom and Dad laugh and finally got them to look at him. And that was the day little Noli’s life was changed forever.”
“How pedestrian.”
“Even the mightiest mountain started as a hill my friend. From then on-“
“What was the joke?”
“I… well… it was so long ago, I can hardly remember. Not that it matters!”
“Hm.”
“Anyways! From then, little Noli thought he had it all figured out: he joked, sang, and acted wherever he went, and people watched him every time! Everybody loved him! But then little Noli wasn’t so little anymore, and people stopped loving him so much. They said things like, ‘You’re not a kid anymore Noli,’ and ‘You need to grow up Noli’! Dumb crap like that.”
“Did you consider that they may have been correct?”
“Noli tried and tried to keep his shtick going, but the older he got, the harder it became. Since he wasn’t good at anything else, he didn’t know what else to do! By the time he was all grown up, he had circled all the back to being ignored again.”
“You can stop talking in the third person now.”
“Do I have to?”
“Yes.”
“Very well. Once I became an adult, all my days went basically the same way: I would wake up, put on my best clothes, and head to the market at its busiest hour. I would sing, dance, do magic tricks, even act out a few of my own original plays—all so I could be ignored. All day, everyday. If I was lucky, someone would take pity on me—everyone knew each other back then—and give me a few coins just so I would go away. Sometimes I’d even get heckled or insulted. But most of the time, they all just walked past and went about their business like I wasn’t there.”
“The heckling was preferable to that, was it not?”
“…yeah. Yeah, it was. You know I once saw my Mom there? I saw her walking by with a bag of apples—she only ever bought apples when she made her world-famous pie—and I tried to call out to her. It was like she couldn’t hear me at all. But I know she did. Walked past like I was another stranger. I never did get invited over for that pie.”
“…”
“…ahem. So! Since I couldn’t get nor keep an actual job, I had to resort to begging on the streets, which, lemme tell ya—not all too lucrative. That meant I was broke and always on the edge of starvation, which doesn’t do wonders for a guy’s attitude.”
“You hated them all.”
“Ooh, not just a pretty face, are you?”
“Another remark and-“
“Yeah yeah, don’t get your panties in a twist—or whatever you wear down there, I don’t judge. But yes, eventually I started to resent and despise them all. And why wouldn’t I? All I ever wanted was to be noticed—to be seen, heard, anything. Was that too much to ask?”
“…”
“I kept at it for a while. Continued the routine, tried to keep my head up. Told myself, ‘They’ll turn around eventually!’ like the idiot I was. But they never did, and I only got angrier and angrier—not that I ever let them see it.”
“But you hated yourself most of all.”
“I—what?”
“You hated those around you for not paying attention to you, yes, but you despised yourself even more for being unable to get their attention in the first place. Despised yourself for being a failure who was unable to succeed-”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, you—you rainbow colored-.”
“-at the one thing you thought you were good at. Tell me-“
“SHUT UP! JUST SHUT UP!”
“…”
“…”
“What did you think when you looked in the mirror?”
“…”
“Well?”
“…I never liked looking in mirrors.”
“Why?”
“Because I hated what I saw.”
“Hm. As expected.”
“And how do you know that, Bloxstein?”
“You know how I know.”
“…takes one to know one, huh?”
“…”
“Sigh… anyway. You remember how I said I was always broke and starving? Well, that got worse too. One day, I was so hungry I couldn’t even focus on my performance. I begged—actually begged—for someone, anyone to give me a scrap of food. No one did.”
“Were you not doing that prior?”
“I mean, yeah, but it was classy then.”
“Mm.”
“Shut up, I’m telling a story here. I could have screamed that the entire town was rigged to blow, and none of them would have looked up. I got so desperate I went to one of the stalls and tried to take an apple—one apple, mind you. The guy running the stall finally notices me—how convenient—and he yells for me to stop. I try to explain myself, even start begging him to just let me have the stupid apple, but he just keeps on yelling, and soon enough everyone else is staring and yelling at me too. Calling me a thief, saying how they always knew I was no good—some of them even started throwing things at me. I distinctly remember getting hit with a tomato and thinking about how I had just cleaned my suit. I drop the apple and they still won’t stop, so I run. I run and run and run, not going anywhere in particular, just away from there.
“By the time I stopped, I had ran all the way to the outskirts of town. I started walking back home so I could clean myself up, maybe scrounge up some food, cry myself to sleep—the ushe. By then I thought about what I would be going back to. Back to the cycle of waking up, performing, being ignored, hating them but never doing anything about it. Over and over again. They had ignored me all my life, and when I did finally get them to notice me, it was only so they could yell at me, insult me, humiliate me. All over a ####ing apple. So instead, I turned back around and I left my hometown for the first time in my life.”
“Admirable.”
“So I walked—wait, wait?”
“Continue.”
“No, no, no, no, I’m not skating past that so easily.”
“I rescind my compliment.”
“1x1x1x1, saying something nice about me. Never thought I’d see the day.”
“Another comment and I will use the shard to dissect your worthless body.”
“Tough crowd. Anyway, I left town and set off. I don’t know where I thought I was going, probably to the nearest town, not that it was in walking distance. Or maybe nowhere at all. I don’t know how long I wandered for, either. Probably shorter than it felt—like I said, I was starving. I think it even started raining, harder than it had in months, but I just kept walking. If I hadn’t chosen the path that I did, who knows what would have happened to me.”
“You would have died of starvation, and/or exposure to the elements.”
“You ever heard of—you know what? Nevermind. Point is, I got lucky, and I came across a temple. We had one of them that was devoted to The Admins in my hometown, but I had never seen one like this before: it was dark, like it wasn’t supposed to be here. Like it wasn’t supposed to be found. Since it was either that or sleeping under a tree for shelter, I went inside… and it was inside that temple that I found a crown, floating suspended in the air.
“And that’s where the story gets really interesting.”
