LATEST UPDATES

Curse the Mainframe! - Chapter 17

Published at 10th of September 2019 04:14:14 PM


Chapter 17

If audio player doesn't work, press Stop then Play button again






Alec was not ashamed to say he used every means at his disposal if it meant avoiding that bunny from hell.

Call him shameless if you would, but he was willing to do it, especially when he was still in this young body where hardly anyone would fault him. He was seven. Seven-year-olds had some leeway in the greater scheme of the world.

A good System used everything that was at his disposable with maximum efficiency.

Basically, he called his mother.

As he nervously hid behind the tree, watching his mother approach the bunny, his heart was beating a rapidly increasing staccato in his chest.

His mother patted the bunny, causing him to feel like he shrunk inwardly as he remembered the feeling on his hands, grabbing his stuff as she casually left.

As she approached, Alec ran out and grabbed her, tugging her to leave quickly, thanking her. "Thank you, mother."

Annalise stopped herself from gushing as her serious son thanked her so whole-heartedly, knowing that he wouldn't appreciate it. But he was just so cute! Though she didn't understand the phobia that he developed all of a sudden, she wouldn't ask. Sometimes, just because a phobia existed, didn't mean that there was a reason for it.

What Annalise didn't know was that Alec indeed had a good reason for his phobia, but not one that he would be able to disclose to her without her finding out that he had another life before this.

Sometimes, he felt like he had stolen the life of an innocent newborn, who would have been able to love his mother wholly and full-heartedly, but instead, what she got was a jaded System in the place of her newborn.

There were days where he couldn't stop thinking about it as he tried to drift off to sleep. He wondered why.

Annalise and Alec returned to their home, with Alec trying his best to banish all thoughts about the bunny from earlier.

[Failed to maintain character type.]

[-100 Points]

[Current points: -80]

[Initializing compulsory mission]

[Character: Alecris Aeden Neil to befriend subject white bunny, effective immediately.]

[Time limit: 30 days]

[Mission failure: Immediate termination of life expectancy]

Haha. Hearing the damn Mainframe's voice in his ears again… he wasn't the least bit happy. Also, there wasn't anyone who was around earlier to witness the loss of his composure! He had so many complaints for this Mainframe.

He! Did! Nothing! Wrong!

Alec valiantly resisted the urge to strangle something. Wait. Was it because he called in help from his mother, thus showing the 'unsightly' part of himself? But she already knew that he wasn't the generic gentle pretty boy that he was portraying himself as.

Of course, he had been praying for more missions from the Mainframe for the past couple of years, but the Mainframe hadn't granted his wishes, obviously. The only missions he got were the ones that he had to 'unlock' himself so to speak.


However, now that he was in the negatives, the Mainframe was giving him one last chance to redeem himself. If he failed, death. If he passed, then he got to survive. Simple.

Simple his ass! In the first place, his mother shouldn't have counted as him going out of character since she already knew from the start. Plus, there was no way in hell that bunny came from nowhere. Did the Mainframe send it?

That had to be it. What else could it be? He refused to admit that his luck was this bad. Also, this compulsory mission… heh.

Was the Mainframe trying to kill him or what? If it wanted to kill him, just do it already! He had to confront his fears and befriend a bunny?!

He would not!

He wouldn't.

He would, dammit.

Even if he failed in the end, he had to at least say he tried. At this realization, Alec felt like breaking out into swears again. He knew himself too well. If he tried to boycott the mission now, he would be haunted until his last breath knowing that he hadn't even tried.

Annalise looked at her son's blank expression, wondering if he was still shocked from earlier. She patted him on the head, causing him to look up at her.

Alec felt slightly calmer as he saw his mother's signature smile, mirroring it, no matter what he felt on the inside, the story emotions could never be expressed on his face.

Human potential was really limitless. Back when he was a System, doing the bidding of the Mainframe, he never thought that he would one day change so much. If his past self from seven years ago looked at him, he would have scoffed and called the person in front of him now a 'bastard that smiled too much'.

Alec inwardly shed a tear. This was all the Mainframe's fault, damnit!

How in the world was he going to complete the mission? How did one befriend a bunny?

Alec had no such experiences to draw from. He had never let himself near any animals since that one day, where he developed his phobia for rabbits.

Or rather, one particular rabbit.

It had been a warm, humid day, so Alec had lay down under the shade of a tree, stretching out. The warm, soft breeze caressed his skin as the sun shone down. The warmth of the sun's rays on his skin lulled him to sleep, one arm across his eyes.

A while passed before he was woken up by the sounds of something approaching him, causing him to crack open an eye in curiosity.

Beside him, there was a black, adorable bunny that lay innocently in the grass next to him, nibbling.

Alec got up, smirking.

Alec carelessly picked up the rabbit who had been minding its own business, holding it by the ears.

"What do we have here? A little bunny rabbit? Hello to tonight's dinner."

Alec, ashamed as he was to admit it, had been an idiot through and through. He should never have done that, because what seemed like an innocent rabbit wasn't at all.

The rabbit had in fact, been the pet of a demonic cultivator. THE demonic cultivator, in fact.

The rabbit that looked like it had been dyed in the depths of the night, had easily escaped from his grasp, kicked him in the face, causing him to fall flat on his back in shock.

Then, it had left, hopping away with its tail bouncing up and down.

If the story had ended just there, it would have been a funny story, but no.

The black rabbit had been the personification of a devil. Alec didn't know what the demonic cultivator had taught his pet, but as sad as it was to admit it, the rabbit was practically a hell spawn itself.

The rabbit had harassed Alec for *years* until he upped and died. Alec had never been so glad to be away from the rabbit that led its armies to besiege him day and night. He was never able to escape from its evil grasp.

Needless to say, Alec was now a very different person after that harrowing experience. The carefree idiot from before had died a long, drawn out death, which, funnily enough, had *not* been at the rabbit's hands, but instead the demonic cultivator himself.

The demonic cultivator said, quote, "Stop harassing my pet!".

Heh. Alec had, of course, in his indignant and wronged rage, rushed forward to chop at the demonic cultivator, then promptly died.

Thus the reason why Alec was terrified of rabbits was born.

In System space, there were no such horrific beings such as rabbits, so he had been gloriously safe. The first few times he entered The Great Expense, he had been nervous, but with every passing day of not seeing his arch nemesis, he grew more confident.

Little did he expect to see one on the rare off days he gave to himself. It was one of the rare pleasures he had left following the horrors of the bunny rabbits.

Now, the System wanted him to befriend the white rabbit from earlier.

Alec choked back a hysterical laugh.

Just how in the world was he going to do that?!




Please report us if you find any errors so we can fix it asap!