The Sealed Chest

On Walpugius Night 2012, Guru Anna made a prophecy that a chest containing a powerful demon would be uncovered somewhere in the eastern shore of the US. Working with this information, High Priest Jonathan found and stole the chest as soon as the humans dug it up. He presented it to the Master.

"With a mighty demon under your command, our forces shall be truly unstoppable," said Jonathan. Delighted with this proposition, Jeff called forth Captain Jack himself to do the honors of opening the chest. But even his immense strength couldn't budge it.

Jeff used his third eye to anaylze the lock and realized that every inch of the chest was sealed with incredibly powerful magic. Runes, spells, inscriptions, symbols, incantations, the works. Whoever had sealed this demon away wasn't taking any chances. But even such a creature had to bend to the most powerful will in the universe, didn't it?

He called Guru Anna forth to undo all the spells. After what seemed like an hour of chanting, Anna stopped, and floated away. "I advise everyone to stand back," she said. "Even though we Jeffs are immune to possession and corruption, demons are still extremely dangerous."

Everyone except for Jeff backed away.

The chest's locks popped on their own, and it shook violently. Gasps could be heard from the crowd of Drones. Suddenly the chest opened wide, and a huge, blinding flash of green light and a belch of ominous-looking fog emitted from it. "MASTER!" cried Anna.

Jeff righted himself and rubbed his eyes. There was now some sort of fog around him, but he could use his third eye to make his way to the chest. It was...to the right of him. About sixteen feet. He crawled forward a few feet, and bumped his snout against something hard. Ow...then again, maybe it was ten feet. He climbed up the engraved front of the chest and perched on the edge. He used his third eye to analyze the contents of the chest. Oh...oh my god! Was this some sort of JOKE?!

The fog was clearing. "Master! Are you all right?" Jeff was perched at the edge of the chest, with a scowl on his face. "Oh, I'm fine. But..." He closed his eyes and used his telekinesis. A charred grey N64 cartridge with "MAJORA" crudely written on it in black Sharpie floated out of the chest and fell to the ground in front of him. He opened his eyes again, looking even anrgier than before. "Your so-called 'demon' is a bit crispy around the edges!"

Anna's third eye took on a furrowed, worried expression. "I-I-I don't understand it...I-I've never been wrong before..." Jeff jumped down, and walked over the cartridge. "There's a first time for everything." Anna rubbed her temples. "All that magical protection on the chest made me certain they were trying to keep SOMETHING powerful from getting out...and I've only seen such measures put in place for things like demons...why would they go through all this trouble for a video game?" Jeff stood on his hind legs and shrugged. "Humans do crazy things. I ought to know, I used to be one. Anyway, I'm willing to forgive you for this mistake. Let's put this behind us, shall we?" He used his telekinesis again, this time to fling the cartridge against the chest as hard as he could.

"Ouch!" That was a voice Jeff had never heard before. It was kind of like a boy's voice, only kind of...digitized? And distorted? "You shouldn't have done that." There it was again. It was coming from the direction of the chest. He crawled towards it. Was it possible...that the cartridge itself was speaking? He decided to test this idea. "I shouldn't have done what?" Jeff asked, tilting his head. "YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE DUG ME UP! NOW I AM FREE TO SPREAD! FREE! FREE! ANYWHERE THERE IS A COMPUTER, THERE IS BEN! HA HA HA HA!!!" Jeff recoiled a bit, then regained his composure. "First of all, calm down. Secondly, you're in a civilization of subterranean creatures that don't USE computers." "What? No computers?" "No computers." "Cell phones?" "Nope." "Video games?" "Nope." The voice sounded exasperated now. "Calculators. At LEAST tell me these backwards savages use CALCULATORS!" Jeff hushed the crowd when they started protesting at the insult. "Closest thing they have is abacuses."

The voice started sobbing. "So that's it...there's no way for me to manifest myself. No way for me to spread. This is the end of the line, is it? No more BEN. The ultimate hacker, the computer virus that could kill living beings, rotting in a cave full of mutant barbarians." A computer virus that can kill? This entity could be useful after all. Jeff came closer to the cartridge, and motioned to Anna for her to teleport him and the game to his quarters. "The Master will be back shortly," she said, and teleported them out.

Jeff and the plastic rectangle materialized in a bedroom filled with ornate furniture scaled to his size that looked like it was straight out of a Victorian dollhouse. "It was awfully rude of me not to introduce myself. My name is Jeff. Anyway, don't get too upset. We don't have computers down here, but I can help you get to the surface world and spread. That is, if you help ME." "Help you?" "Yes. I want to be your friend. Friends...help each other." "Golly. I've never actually had a friend before...not since I changed..." "Changed?" "Oh yeah. You see, I wasn't always a virus. I used to be a kid." BEN told Jeff his story. "Ah, I know how you feel," said Jeff. "I too was once human. And like you, I suffered tragedy. My brother was beaten nearly to death before my eyes, and I came to see how horrible humans are. At first I wanted to merely kill them all, but then I gained strange powers which enabled me to change them into creatures that look like the ones you saw earlier." He decided to leave out the fact that said creatures were his slaves and lived only to serve him. "So, we both agree humans are a scum upon the earth?" "Well, I don't like humans very much, but I do enjoy messing with them..." "Close enough. So, are you willing to help me?" "Sure. So what do I have to do for you?"

Jeff told BEN about how everyone thought there was still only one Jeff The Killer, and how he had apparently escaped Deninburgh Mental Asylum when in fact he had died trying to escape and had been resurrected as a parasite. "If the truth gets out, my dream will be ruined. My empire will fall. That must not happen. You will make sure the lie never dies, and eliminate the ones who uncover the truth."

This seemed reasonable. But then, after so many months locked away in that chest, ANYTHING seemed reasonable.So it was settled. BEN would go out and seek people who were trying to find the truth about Jeff The Killer, and the Sleep-Bringers would aid BEN. In addition, Jeff promised BEN he'd be able to manifest himself in the real world at will. BEN wasn't sure how he'd accomplish this.

Well, it involved a 3D printer, an N64, and a forbidden spell that brings illustrations to life. All three of these things (plus the original cursed cartridge) ceased to exist when the ritual was completed thanks to the resulting explosion, but as a result BEN was now a being that could shift between pure data and a flesh-and-blood creature whenever he wished. He looked kind of strange now with his grub-like body and three-pronged tail, but he took anything he could get. He was taken to the surface, and let loose in a Starbucks, where he shifted into data and infected a laptop. BEN's whereabouts from then on in this timeline are sketchy, but in China there have been a recent rash of sightings of a six-legged lizard wearing a green cap that supposedly causes computers to malfunction. On the back of its neck is a red mark that looks like a smiling face; seeing this symbol is apparently bad lu... YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE DONE THAT.