Bromy logged into the game, his character appearing in his usual coat and hat.
'Somewhat surprised this place is still standing...' he though scratching the back of his head.
He opened his friends list and clicked on Bonifacius, he clicked the "Private Message" button before taking out one of his hand-crafted pseudo-cigarettes and lighting it.
Bromy: Hey, what's up.
The reply came in a matter of seconds.
Bonifacius: Bromy! Thou have returned!
Bromy: Yup, I've been a bit busy at work, some dumbass shoved his hand in a wood chipper to "prove it wouldn't hurt him because of protective measures" he said whilst giving off a real-life sigh.
Bonifacius: I would hate to be a doctor! The blood would be highly unpleasant for me...
Bromy: I wish I was a doctor, in my s#*t-hole of a country I'm basically a surgeon, doctor, pharmacist and therapist in one.
Bonifacius: Where art thou right now?
Bromy looked around his location.
The stone roads and several houses almost resembled a propper town at this point, dozens of multi-story homes and shops, about two-hundred NPCs and a few dozen players walked through the crowded streets of the small city which sprawled out from the Log Frog Tentacle Online base.
The lights given off by the lanterns almost made it look like day, despite the pitch-black night sky.
Bromy: I'm outside the inn, I'll be over to the guild-base soon.
Bonifacius: I shall be there in a moment, I was helping out with the construction of a new building.
Bromy: They're still building new stuff? What is it?
Bonifacius: Well, the NPCs requested to build a school or "someplace to put the brats while we get drunk at the inn"
Bromy: Christ, looks like the NPCs really are becoming more NPC-like...
Bromy started making his way to the distant structure which loomed over the rest of the town, the guild base.
Bromy: So, will you be at the school?
Bonifacius: What does thou mean, I am far too old to attend a school, not to mention a fictional one.
Bromy: You know what I mean, in case you forgot you were a teacher.
Bonifacius: I would prefer that my past career remains in the past tense.
Bromy: Come on, as your doctor, surgeon, therapist and pharmacist I recommend you drop by, I'll even drop in and play the nurse, it'll be like the good old times.
Bonifacius: Thou would terrify the children!
Bromy: That's cold, I deal with kids all the time, last week I had a mother who replaced her son's ear-drops for an infection with essential oils...
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Bonifacius: ...did they work?
Bromy: No, Bony, they did not, the kid had a greasy, inflamed ear that smelled vaguely like oregano.
Bonifacius: Poor child.
Bromy: Yeah, she said it wasn't the oil, but the toxins in the plastic bottles... I had to practically restrain myself from choking her.
Bonifacius: So, what did thou do?
Bromy: After using up every swear-word in both my native language and English I told her to "Go find a fu#*ing shaman if she wants to be a wizard."
Bonifacius: But what about the child's ear?
Bromy: What do you mean, I can't force her to not poison her kid.
Bonifacius: Indeed thou can! Thou should have explained why the oils were a bad idea!
Bromy: Bony, look, I believe I made myself clear on my willingness to believe in magic, be it magic-oils or logical-Karens.
Bonifacius: What's a Karen? Does thou mean the mother's name?
Bromy: I have no clue, but some 12-year-old kid came in here calling his mother a Karen and it stuck with me.
Bromy stepped inside of the guild-building and sat down at one of the tables in the main room.
Moments later Bonifacius stepped through the door, clad in his usual armour.
Bromy: Welcome back, Bony the builder.
Bonifacius: Greetings once more!
He moved over and sat opposite Bromy.
Bonifacius: So then, I suppose thou had not time to search around for John?
Bromy: As a matter of fact, I did.
Bonifacius raided his eyebrows in anticipation of Bromy's discoveries.
Bromy: So after typing his username up and looking it up I found an old Meintube channel, "JohnWillNotStab" - I looked through the videos in the background while stitching wood-chipper guy back together.
Bonifacius: Art thou implying JohnWillStab was used to be some meintuber?
Bromy let out a laugh.
Bromy: Not just some meintuber, 40 million subscribers, that's no small feet.
Bonifacius: Thou can't be serious! Our JohnWillStab is famous!? Bony couldn't hide the slight excitement in his tone.
Bromy: Not quite... perhaps infamous would be a better word for it.
Bromy sent Bonifacius a link to one of the videos.
Bonifacius clicked the link and was brought to a meintube page, specifically the channel called "JohnWillNotStab".
His channel icon was removed, displaying the default grey-silhouette.
The title of the video was "JohnWillNotStab's Wormcraft III stream #86!"
Bonifacius minimized both the game window and the meintube page to watch and chat to Bromy at the same time.
The video had a ">99% dislike to like ratio" and over ten-million views before the statistics were locked since the account became inactive.
Like a permanent screen-shot of the past.
Bonifacius clicked "play" on the video.
The opening was abrupt, cutting straight into the start-screen of Wormcraft 3, a 3-D strategy game, though thanks to its robust map-making system, players often made games of their own using the game as a base.
"Hey, what's up guys, it's me, JohnWillNotStab with the eighty-something-th stream of Wormcraft 3!"
'He sounds so young...' Bonifacius though whilst watching intently for any clues to see if he was really JohnWillStab.
"As promised, I will be doing custom maps today, I haven't seen any of them yet, so I hope they're good!" he clicked the "custom game" button and selected the first map on his list.
"Right, first map is called..." he looked over to the name "1v1 me, asshole"
JohnWillStab let out a bit of a laugh before clicking the little "x" button beside it, "Yeah, I'll skip that one."
He spent the next few minutes looking through the list and selecting five different maps to play (from over one-hundred sent in)
"Right, if there's some time left over we can pick out another map or something."
He clicked play and the first map appeared, it was an empty room with a counter counting down from thirty.
"Some sort of puzzle? How come 30 seconds feels like such a long time when you're looking at the numbers tick down, y'know."
When the countdown finished a message flashed on the screen, one which for the sake of not having this deleted I won't post, just image the most offensive thing possible and multiply it by pineapple on pizza, it was probably to do with race or something, just trust me on this, it's better left unposted.
"Shit!" JohnWillStab called out as he rushed to close map/
Bonifacius' face twisted into a look of discomfort as he read the message on the screen.
The live-chat was filled with all sorts of reactions, from people complaining about the message, to people laughing at it and even some blaming JohnWillStab for lot looking at the maps beforehand.
"Well damn, looks like none of these are safe!"
Moments later his stream was shut down, Bonifacius had no idea if it was JohnWillNotStab was responsible for the shutdown or if meintube shut it down.
Bonifacius: Does thou think that was JohnWillStab?
Bromy: Well, Bony, thanks to a herculean leap in logic, and the deductive skills of Einstein himself, I discovered that yes, that's probably him.
Bromy: I mean, you said he was in his 20s, he sounds young in the video which is a few years old, he was strangely good with crowds, decent at strategy, I think it all adds up.
Both of them sat and thought about it for a while.
Bonifacius: Perhaps it could be him... but that doesn't tell us much about him or his whereabouts.
Bromy sent him another link.
Bromy: Actually, this video might be a good starting place.