Original Stories – The Haunted House

If you happened to look at the hill that loomed over the town from the north, you’d see a house-like shape that sat at the top. It was a dilapidated looking house, and it had secrets, secrets that no one dared to find the answers for, until some HF staff discovered something that would change their life forever.

It was a hot, humid Thursday evening. The sun was setting over the hills, and Javi watched it set while relaxing on the patio. She was enjoying her last few days of summer vacation, and wished she had done something meaningful and interesting during it. All she did during it was wake up, lurk in the Help Force for 23 hours , recruit people for the glorious, gracious motherland, and get 1 hour of sleep (because proper sleep isn’t allowed for the HF staff team). Whilst she was thinking about this, NervousZippo, one of her fellow staff friends, came out of nowhere. “Hey Javi, whatcha doing?” she asked in a slightly curious tone.

“Oh nothing, as usual,” she replied sadly.

“I think I can fix your mood. See that house on the hill? We should definitely check it out and end our summer on a good note.”

She had a wide grin on his face, and Javi knew that when she acted like this, nothing good came out of it. “I even heard it was ‘haunted’ and ‘we shouldn’t go near it’. I think they’re dumb”, NervousHippo stated. 

“And I think they’re right. I’m bored, but not bored enough to go near that house, if you even want to call it that,” Javi retorted.

“Ok then, snowy will take away your link perms again and not give us bot money if you don’t come,” Nervous taunted as she stuck her tongue out.

“I need those perms to spam songs in the chat. Ok fine, I’ll go.” Javi said, dejectedly.

NervousHippo and Javi trudged up the hill, where they met Snowy. “I heard the news Snowy, why was I forced to be here?” Javi asked.

“Well, I wanted to see if you two could get rid of this house once and for all. I usually ignore this place, but as I was walking home to feed the ten thousand jumping rats at home, I heard some weird sounds coming from the house, things like “oop” and “it’s ketchup time.”

“That’s weird,” Hippo said. “Houses don’t usually talk about ketchup.”

“They don’t talk in general,” Javi said, shaking her head. “Anyways Snowy, yes we’ll see what’s going on, it’s not like our paychecks and link perms are on the line here”. 

Snowy grinned at them as they left, not wanting to reveal her true intentions immediately.

Javi and Hippo marched up the steps leading to the house, determined to get this whole thing over with. Inside, they met Plotter, who was also threatened by Snowy to get to the button of this mystery. “Honk!” Plotter exclaimed. I didn’t expect to see you guys here, I thought only Snowy forced me here.” “Let’s get this over with, I have some gambling to get back to,” Javi said.

While walking through the house, it slowly began to get more interesting. There were rooms filled with out of context messages, some rooms mumbled things about bot money, sapphires, and more ketchup, and some rooms had nothing, and looked relatively new compared to the rest of the building. Finally, the three hungry staff members reached the top, where they saw pictures of the old commanders of the help force. Plotter, Javi and Nervous turned at the sound of Snowy appearing in the doorway. “What is this place Snowy?” Nervous asked.

“Yeah, I thought it was a creepy house, but all I’ve seen is things related to the Help Force,” Javi said, relieved that there wasn’t anything to be afraid of inside.

“Oh this old thing? This is the heart of HF, the physical representation of what we stand for, and everything the members are known for.”

“So that’s why we could recognize everything here? Because it’s all HF? But why? I thought we were just an online penguin army, I didn’t know that this place existed,” Hippo said.

“Well new staff, it’s because HF is much more than an army. Every time someone makes a lasting impact on the army, it gets sent here, and the first commanders of HF came up with  the idea. They wanted to use the energy from the hype about events and other HF related activities and use it to manifest a physical version of the  server for future members to see, but over time it got lost to time.”

The three staff members left the building with a new change of heart. After knowing the background of the house, they decided to get rid of its bad reputation, and show the true story behind it, that its energy and contributions to the help force is powerful enough to bring it all to life.

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