Tim fucking Higgens

This is a companion fluff story for the /tg/ homebrew game Server Crash.

"CYYBEER-HGLK!"

The highway erupted in panic. Everyone started running back and forth, pushing against each other. .exe's revv'd up and ran through crowds of people, doing more immediate damage than the Cybers were doing, if they were even there- no, I could see them now. I could tell where they were in the crowd from the parts flying into the air.

"Get over here!" said a man behind me, grabbing me by my collar and dragging me over. I don't remember much about him- his face was wrapped in cloth, and he had what looked like a machete in his hand. He dropped me behind him, frozen with fear, and grabbed two more from the crowd.

"Over the guard rail, Head back under the highway until you find a hyperlink, go gogoMOVE!"

They jumped right over. He had a leg over, then looked over at me, still frozen in terror. He gave a grunt of displeasure. He came back over, ducked low in the chaos, punched someone in the face who was right about to bowl him over, and got to me. He threw me bodily over the guardrail. Fell a few feet, and landed on my side. Winded, like it made any difference.

He jumped down, landing nimbly on his feet. Looked at me with distaste. He slung me over his shoulder, and started running full tilt under the highway. I remember hearing the screams overhead, seeing down his back, watching the dirt rush by. Man must've been running 300kb/s, easy.

We came over to the group, huddled by the link, looking scared, confused.

"The hell didn't you go through the link for?" He growled.

"How should we know it's safe?" The cloth over his head that left nothing but his eyes in the open twitched, like he was grinning.

"Well, you could've gone through and looked. Guess that's what separates you from me, huh?" He pointed to a man with a shotgun who was holding hands with a young woman. "You first, then the woman. I'll carry useless here through last."

The man turned and kissed the woman, cocked his shotgun, and stepped through. The woman looked back at us, and shrieked, pointing. I turned my head, and saw one of the nastiest looking Cybers ever. Bug eyed, gaping maw, dangling, spiked trunk, a rotting carcass of a thing, like a cross between some kind of slavering fish and a zombie elephant.

The man turned, kicked the woman in the gut and knocked her right through the hyperlink. He turned back, drawing his machete from his pants. The thing stooped low and roared in his face, a hiss, a trumpet, and a shriek.

He chuckled.

"Well," he said, addressing the horror. "I'd call you smart, but since you're lookin' at me, I'd be lying. I know you're one of the original Cybers from immediately after the fall of DF forums. Hell, I killed most of you cycles and cycles ago. You must've been one of the ones that ran, cutting and running before you came up...against me." He brandished his machete, and shook his fist in the things face. It shrieked again, snarling and stomping.

"I've followed your spawngroup after you left, taking you down one by one. I've lived where you live. I've survived where you hide. Your kind has a name for me, I'm told. "The Deleter." Apt, I'd say." He took another step towards the fish-elephant. I swear to you as moot as my witness, it took a step BACK. It wasn't trumpeting no more.

"I've been browsing since before you were two characters put together. I've taken more code apart than your spawngroup did in the surprise raid on SA in '69." He kept walking towards the thing, and it kept walking backwards. It slipped in the dirt and fell still. The man kept right on walking, right up a leg thick as a man, over its chest, and right up to its face. It could've tilted its head and nudged him right into its gaping mouth, swallowed him whole. But it didn't. It was too scared.

"I'm Tim fucking Higgins, and I'm the greatest surfer this side of the wikis. And you're still lookin' at me, boy." He shoves the machete straight through one of its putrid eyes and turns the entire thing into a mass of collapsed code, scattering to the ends of the server. He put his machete back into his pants.

"Pussy." He walked back over to me, and gave me a glare.

"If you ain't got the use of your legs back yet son, I'm certain I might just get rid of any dead weight on you so I don't pull anything carrying you through to SA, know what I'm sayin'?"

I got up and walked through the link.