41. Ft. Buttons
Despite it being a weekday afternoon, Rippa’s live viewer count reached thirty thousand within the first thirty minutes of the highly anticipated ‘with Buttons’ stream going live. About half of the viewers were immensely disappointed when Rippa booted up Minecraft.
“We are not doing another Q&A,” Rippa told her chat. “We are gonna just hang out and chill.”
“Hello, chat!” Buttons greeted over the Discord voice chat. “Everyone, like and subscribe. And hit the notification bell!”
Rippa had placed a 2D PNG avatar of the kid beside her VTuber avatar, and it bobbed, reacting to Buttons’ voice. It was a neat industry norm that helped viewers discern who was speaking.
‘Hi Buttolls!’
The kid was in her bedroom, at the laptop Rippa had previously set up on the writing desk. Rippa, on the other hand, was at her stream station in Goggles’ office, which made it easier for the veteran streamer to simply walk over and troubleshoot any technical difficulties Buttons might face. For instance, Buttons was already having difficulty joining Rippa’s Minecraft world, which Rippa quickly fixed by paying a quick visit from the next room.
“Damn it, kid, why are your IDs all Buttolls?” Rippa’s voice was picked up by Buttons’ mic as she was helping the kid join the server.
“Butt Ons. Butt Holes. You get it? Hehe.”
Rippa’s chat heard Buttons getting bonked on the head.
It soon became apparent that the kid had terrible mouse control. Buttons’ character in the game moved in a highly erratic fashion, often moving in a different direction than intended. She bumped into walls many times before finally managing to walk through the door and enter Rippa’s base.
“Buttons, maybe your mouse sensitivity is too high?” Rippa suggested.
“Eh? No, no. It’s just bad piloting on my part.”
“What do you mean?”
“I suck at fine control,” Buttons explained. “I can’t use chopsticks either. Or do origami. I have practically zwei linke Hände.”
“Zva— what?”
“Two left hands.”
‘Woman driving,’ the chat was memeing.
“Bruh, you had three thousand years.”
But what Buttons said next made everyone shut up. “Isn’t it amazing, Rippa? The human body is so intricate and complex, it took me three hundred years just to barely make it sit up.”
After a few seconds of silence, Rippa ventured the heavy question. “Didn’t you make the replica to…” She stopped.
Buttons sighed, but did not sound like she minded the question. “Papa could not wait that long.”
Rippa did not know what to say. She opened her inventory and threw a flower at Buttons’ feet. The kid’s character picked it up immediately. Thankfully, Buttons kept blabbing and prevented the mood from getting too heavy.
“But mind you, though, I can always have Goggles help me and make fine adjustments in real time,” said Buttons.
“Hang on,” something clicked in Rippa’s head. “Is that why you are banned from Fortnite?”
Buttons sighed again. “Yeah. They thought I used an aimbot.”
‘LMAO banned for being god.’
‘Skill issue.’
“Ahahaha! An aimbot?”
“I’m also banned from Overwatch, Counter-Strike, Rainbow Six—”
“Oh my god, bruh!”
“I’m hardware-banned on Steam,” Buttons lamented. “Of course, Goggles could easily sort that out for me, and I make new accounts, but then I get banned again. So unfair.”
Rippa and her chat were dying laughing. Just imagining Goggles insisting on pixel-perfect aim, and subsequently getting Buttons perma-banned as a result, was just too funny.
“So, what do you think of my base? Pretty cool, eh?” asked Rippa, having calmed down.
Buttons’ character wandered around, bumping into things and opening chests to look inside. “I’ve watched you working on the base. It’s super cool,” she said.
“Yeah, I worked hard on it.”
“It’s better than my palace.”
“Nah~ bruh, you are overstating it. Oh, by the way, chat,” Rippa addressed her viewers, “Buttons has a palace in her pocket dimension.”
“Pocket dimension?”
“Oh, yeah. That’s what Papapin calls it, and it kinda stuck.”
“I like that,” Buttons approved.
“Oh, by the way, chat. Papapin and Mamapin have been to the pocket dimension many times,” Rippa told her chat. “Goggles even installed a beer tap for Papapin.”
‘Rippa, could you please not drip-feed lore-drops like that?’ her viewers complained.
Rippa laughed and apologized. “Sorry, guys. I’ve lost track of what I’ve already told you and what I haven’t. But in my defense, it’s been very hectic, what with the world turning upside down and all.”
“I see… Understandable,” Buttons nodded from her bedroom.
Rippa’s eyes bulged. “Bruh! You are the reason why the world is upside down!”
“Oh? It’s my fault, is it?”
“Why, yes! If you hadn’t run your little mouth at the taco truck, this whole thing would have been a secret just between you and me.” With that, Rippa bonked Buttons with her stone pickaxe.
“Hey!”
The two then spent a good minute or so chasing each other. After that, Rippa shared some bread to replenish Buttons’ HP.
“I wish Minecraft had been around back then,” said Buttons rather casually.
“Back when?”
“I mean, before Goggles came.”
“Ah~,” Rippa nodded. “He built the palace for you, right?”
“Yeah. He built everything. Before then, it was pretty much empty.”
“Why? Where did you sleep then?”
“I didn’t want to be in it,” said Buttons. “It didn’t feel right. So I slept under bridges and goat pens and chicken coops and pig stalls.”
Rippa gulped. Her chat was spamming question marks. ‘Talk about drip-feeding lore bombs.’
“Oh, I remember,” Rippa probed, “Goggles said something about you bumming your way across the continent.”
“Not always,” said Buttons. “Sometimes, some kind-hearted soul took me in.”
“Were you like… always on the move?” asked Rippa. This was getting interesting. “Or did you stay in some places?”
“Ah, I usually stayed for some years. Then I had to run,” said Buttons, reminiscing.
“You had to run?”
***
“Isobel, who’s that girl?” the villagers would ask.
Grandma Isobel would tell them she found the girl while out in the fields.
“Poor thing was limping with her crutch and starving. Says she ran away from bad people,” Isobel would explain and dab her eyes with a handkerchief.
“Tsk, why add one more mouth to feed?” a few would question the old woman’s poor decision.
However, many would nod and think, ‘Of course, granny Isobel would take the kid in. She’s got the heart of an angel.’
“Isobel, something isn’t right with that girl,” the villagers would whisper. “It’s been three years, and she hasn’t grown a single inch.”
“Aw, rubbish. She’s just slow,” Granny Isobel would dismiss.
“Isobel, the kid isn’t right,” the villagers would hiss. “It’s been five years, and she’s still a child! Tristan is already growing a beard. Something isn’t right, Isobel.”
“Stop that nonsense!” Granny would hiss back. “And if Tristan kicks her ever again, there will be a reckoning!”
“Granny Isobel, she is a demon!” the villagers would now openly say. “It’s been ten years now! Can’t you see?”
Isobel would glare at them. Sitting in her chair at the doorstep. Gently rocking the bruised kid sleeping in her now-frail arms. She would move her ever-trembling fingers to wipe tears off the kid’s cheek, gently touch the broken lip, and throw a rage-filled look at the crutch on the ground, now shattered into pieces. The silver-haired head would then turn toward the villagers crowded in front of her hut, and croak in a weak voice. “Shame on you! Shame on all of you!”
And when the day came that Granny Isobel lay in her bed in her final moments, the child would cry her heart out, kiss the old woman goodbye, and, weeping and sobbing, crawl, hop, and limp away from the village and disappear into the darkness, as the villagers started to gather with torches and pitchforks and meat cleavers to look for the devil-spawn.
***
“And many such cases,” Buttons concluded.
Rippa was completely silent. Even her chat had slowed down to a crawl.
“You see what I mean?” Buttons was still reminiscing, oblivious to the silence. “Goggles tends to exaggerate and doompost. I’ve met many nice people, too, see?”
The kid’s character was cutting down a tree as she spoke. The nonchalant casualness made Rippa’s heart shrink in pain.
Buttons continued, “There’s a good trick I learned. When a grown-up asks you, ‘Hey, kid, what are you doing out here all alone?’ you say, ‘I’m looking for my big brother. He’s gone with big scary men.’ Worst-case scenario, they point you toward the safest place they know. Best-case, you are set for good… for maybe five years. Ten years, if lucky.”
She had gathered enough wood blocks to make a crafting table. Rippa watched the kid’s motionless character as Buttons looked through the list of items she could make.
“But in a big city like Samarkand, I could stay much longer. I just move to another district, and nobody knows me,” the kid was still going on.
“Samarkand?” Rippa’s voice came out cracked.
“The Silk Road City. I stayed there for over fifty years.”
“Where’s that?”
‘Uzbekistan,’ her viewers answered the question for her.
“Uzbekistan? Where’s that? And how the fuck did you get there all the way from Scotland?” Rippa was now baffled.
“Oh, I walked,” Buttons shrugged. “I had heard many kids were going to Jerusalem, so I was on my way to check it out. But then I heard the whole thing fizzled out, so I then decided to go and see Constantinople—”
“What?”
“—but then the Mongols picked me up in Serbia, and I had a lot of fun—”
“Wait, wait,” Rippa had to stop Buttons there. “The Mongols? Didn’t they, like… try to kill you or anything?”
“Eh? No. They were super nice to me. I had a jolly good time.”
“Such as?”
“Like fishing, camping, drawing maps for them, riding, that sort of thing.”
‘Wait, what?’
‘Ayo?’
Buttons had made a wooden shovel and was now leveling the field. In her erratic, clumsy way, of course.
“OK, so, how did you end up in Samar— the Silk Road City?” asked Rippa.
Buttons was still busy leveling the field, but she managed to spare some attention to answer her friend.
“I heard Marco Polo was going east. So I was like, ‘Oh, nice. Beaten path,’ but after passing Samarkand, I saw the desert and the mountains and said to myself, ‘Nope, I’m not doing that,’ and returned to the city. It’s a bit hard with my leg, you know.”
Rippa had to interrupt Buttons here. “Samduiord, thank you for the Super Chat. ‘Rippa, this talk should have been in the Q&A stream.’ Yeah, I think you are right.”
Another Super Chat came in. ‘How did she cross the English Channel in the first place?’
“Yeah, Buttons. How?” asked Rippa.
“Hmm… Didn’t you know? There were lots of boats going back and forth,” Buttons said.
Her answer was… surprisingly mundane. The kid had somehow walked all the way down to the English coast from Scotland. And one day, she was just standing there. Just watching people negotiating and trading and moving lots of interesting things. And one merchant loosely pointed at his goods, which Buttons happened to be standing next to. And when the man’s trade partners loaded up the goods on their boats, they assumed Buttons was a part of the deal. And voilà, she crossed the Channel whether she liked it or not.
“I crossed Gibraltar in the exact same way,” Buttons added.
Rippa had to open Google Maps to find where Gibraltar was.
At this point, a Creeper appeared and blew up the field Buttons had prepared for wheat farming. The kid was, naturally, furious and stopped dropping lore bombs. She and Rippa then spent a good hour or so making the farm, but this time bigger, with a small water reservoir and fences and such.