Anti-fun guy's Arc

Chapter 2 of 5

Anti-fun guy spread his sketches across the workbench in his research station. Fifteen disruption sites, all documented. The data was perfect. Travis Springtail would have to listen now. He rolled up the most damning charts and tucked his notebook under his arm. He found Travis near the edge of the forest, lounging against a wooden gate wrapped in vines. Anti-fun guy laid out the evidence on a flat stone. Charts. Measurements. Photographs of dying mycelium. "Seventeen percent spore viability," he announced, tapping the data. "Network failure across forty-three meters. Your dimension-hopping caused this." Travis glanced at the papers, shrugged, and laughed. "Looks fine to me, dude. Trees are still standing." He walked away without a second look. Anti-fun guy stood there, charts in hand, rage building in his chest. Behind him, something cracked. He turned to see the gate split down the middle. Vines writhed across the wood, moving like they had muscles. The nearest disruption site was spreading. He pulled out his makeshift pressure gauge, a cracked glass dial wrapped in vine tubing he'd rigged yesterday. The pointer jumped from safe to critical in seconds. The disruption was advancing faster than his models predicted. He sprinted toward the nearest structure, a small wooden outhouse with a crescent moon carved in the door. The vines were already creeping toward it, tendrils stretching across the ground. Anti-fun guy drove a metal stake into the earth and mounted the gauge on top. If Travis wouldn't listen to data, maybe he'd care when buildings started collapsing. Anti-fun guy marked the measurement in his notebook with shaking hands. The spreading had accelerated. Travis's ignorance had just made everything worse.