A/N: Thank you very much to Boo from EnderGirls for drawing me the fantastic fanart that you see on the side of this chapter! I have received some more fanart, but that will have to wait until next chapter ;)

I stared at the message. I couldn’t believe it. I had misjudged Darren, assumed that he would never even acknowledge my existence… and yet here he was, calmly asking me to talk to him. I couldn’t help but smile, and shortly after, I started crying.

I wasn’t worthy of all these subscribers. I didn’t care for them. It was shameful, the amount of times I had ignored an email, the amount of times I had ‘forgotten’ to call back all those people who had given me their Skype. Now I knew how it felt to be just another fan, brushed aside by my idol. I had thought that Darren would be the exact same as me, letting the fame get to his head. But the simple fact that he had recognized me was enough to make me think otherwise.

He was willing to give it all up for me. I never thought that a person like him could even exist, but that was only because of me. I was a selfish person, only liking people who could bring more success to my channel. When I finished EJM: Butter Edition, I remembered feeling annoyed when Bodil40 asked me to play with him. I didn’t want to play with such a small YouTuber. The first time I played with him, I hated him.

At heart, though, I had enjoyed playing with him. I realised that a YouTuber didn’t have to be popular to be funny. Darren was just one example of that. The tears were flowing down my face now, as I remembered everyone who had asked me to record with them, and everyone who I had rejected. If they didn’t have at least a hundred thousand subscribers, I wouldn’t even consider playing Minecraft with them.

I – well, Sky – had the dream life. Yet I had taken that for granted, and neglected my power. When I was a small YouTuber, I was much more caring for my subscribers. Whenever I hit a milestone, I thanked all my subscribers, and even made special videos for them. But as the numbers went up, my passion went down. I viewed these milestone videos as a chore, and stopped making them, deciding to livestream instead, or even doing nothing at all.

Now that I had such a small amount of subscribers, I felt like I didn’t want to make YouTube videos any more. Deep down, I knew that I was only doing YouTube as an easy way to get money. I abused my power, making the same videos over and over again just so that I wouldn’t lose any subscribers, and thus not lose any money. I wanted to play it safe, keeping all the money for myself. I hardly ever introduced new YouTubers to my crew.

However, Darren was different. He cared for his subscribers. I supposed that was because he didn’t actually have that many subscribers, and he could afford to do that, but he was in my shoes now. I remembered that in his survival series, he always gave a shoutout to each new subscriber. I never did that, even when I was just a kid making crappy little Runescape videos. Darren didn’t view his subscribers as just a number. He viewed them as people.

I noticed another message from Sky (or Darren) in the chat.

SkythekidRS -> [me]: Check your youtube inbox. i sent you a message

Quickly, I minimised the Minecraft launcher and went to YouTube. As soon as I went to my YouTube inbox, I saw the message from SkyDoesMinecraft. Oh my god. Did Sky want to record with me? I opened the message, heart pounding, and realised what I had just thought. I wasn’t a fan of Sky. I was Sky himself. I couldn’t forget that.

After reading the message, I followed Sky’s instructions, going to Gmail and composing a new message. I decided that the best way to solve this would be to meet each other in real life and having a proper conversation. I guessed that I should go to Sky’s house and have a chat there, as my mum would probably freak out if she saw someone so much older than me looking for me.

No! Not my mum, Darren’s! I need to get back to normal before I forget who I am completely. Hurriedly, I start typing.

Hey Darren,

We need to meet up and talk properly. How about we meet up at

How could I phrase this? If I said ‘your house’, he might come over to here. But if I said my house, he might come over here as well... suddenly I remembered Dakota. I decided that writing ‘Sky and Kermit’s house’ was the best thing to do.

...at Sky and Kermit’s house? I can come over tomorrow, if you like.

~Adam

There. I sent the message and yawned. I checked the time and realised that it was already well past midnight. I should really get to sleep now. I felt slightly uncomfortable wearing another guy’s pyjamas, so I reluctantly snuggled under the covers in my current clothes.

I couldn’t believe that this time yesterday, I was talking grumpily to Dakota, wondering what to do for my five million subscriber special. Now I had less than ten subscribers. Today had been the longest day of my life.

What if I couldn’t swap places with Darren again? It suddenly hit me that I didn’t have the faintest idea on how to reverse this occurrence. Would it be that bad, though? Landon wasn’t a bad guy, and Darren’s other friends seemed kind of decent too. I could get used to this.

Yet… I would miss my other friends. Ty, Jason, Dakota, Quentin… the list went on and on. And it wasn’t just because they had lots of subscribers. When we all met up at PAX, we had had a blast. As well as being great YouTubers, they were great friends.

I heard a quiet ‘ping’ and sat up. A dim light was coming from the bedside table. Rummaging through the mess, I took hold of the light and held it in front of me. It turned out that it was Darren’s mobile phone. Somebody had texted me.

hey daz, u ok? The text was from Landon. Did he know? Impossible. How would he know, anyway?

im fine, thanks, I typed shakily.

r u sure, I read. Crap. He did know. Or did he? I decided to take a risk on this one and pretend that nothing was wrong.

what makes u think that anyway

Landon’s response took a while to arrive. However, when I finally got the text, I almost dropped the phone in shock.

darren i know somethings up. im not an idiot. pls tell me whats wrong i promise i wont tell anyone.

Crap, how did he know? I couldn’t think about that now, though. There was no point hiding it any more. Landon was on to me, and I knew that he wouldn’t take no for an answer. It almost took me a full minute to answer; my hand was shaking so much.

ill tell you tomorrow ok

This time, it took even longer for Landon to answer. I wondered what he was thinking. Was he wondering what was wrong with me? Was he thinking of how to answer? Did he simply drop his phone? His brief answer didn’t shed any light on the answer.

ok

I put away the phone, unable to cope. How did he know? I hadn’t done anything weird… had I? Well, I didn’t really know what Darren’s normal life was like. However, I had stupidly gone to that football match. I must have screwed up then. What a moron.

How was I going to explain this one? ‘Oh Landon, I used to be SkyDoesMinecraft, but overnight I somehow turned into a fourteen-year-old boy! So even though I look like your best friend, I’m actually a guy with over four million subscribers!’ I wouldn’t believe it if I was in Landon’s position, and I was sure Landon wouldn’t think any different.

I couldn’t get to sleep now. I was too busy wondering how Landon would react. I guessed that at first, he would doubt me. But would he believe me after that? He might laugh, shrug it off. He might accuse me of lying. He might help me…

The more I thought about it, the more I realised that I knew next to nothing about Landon. I gave up trying to sleep and returned to the computer.

Sky still hadn’t replied to my message yet. Were we even in the same time zone? I knew that I was still in America, but where? Try as I might, I couldn’t recall where I used to live. We could be a mile apart or a thousand. Perhaps I should have asked Sky that before telling him I would come over.

To take my mind off of things, I decided to play some Minecraft. The launcher was still open, paused in the lobby of Sky’s server. What should I do? Right now, I felt like doing some good old PVP, so I went through the portal to the factions server. Besides, I wanted to know what sort of stuff Darren had.

As soon as I entered the server, I was quite surprised to see Darren’s inventory. He had a diamond chestplate, and iron for everything else. It was also all enchanted. The iron all had Protection I, and the chestplate had Protection IV and Thorns III. Someone got lucky on the enchanting table. I also had an enchanted diamond sword. This one had Sharpness III and Fire Aspect II. Not bad.

I dropped into the PVP zone, careful to avoid all the hackers and donators. I noticed a noob punching dirt. Easy kill. However, as I approached them, I wondered why I was killing them. They only had a few blocks of dirt, after all. I checked my inventory again and noticed I had a couple of iron swords.

The guy’s name was ‘mlg_haxx0r1337’. Original. He looked at me, but I didn’t hit him. Instead, I handed him an iron sword. There was also a spare iron chestplate and leggings that I handed him. Now it would take slightly longer for the hackers to kill him.

We stared at each other awkwardly before I turned around and sprinted away. A moment later, I stopped and looked for haxx0r. He was gone. Somehow I felt accomplished, saving this guy’s life.

I kept on sprinting, occasionally taking a rest to eat. There were plenty of cooked porkchops in my inventory, so I didn’t have to worry about starving to death. Suddenly I remembered the /home command. I quickly typed it in to see where it would take me.

My eyes widened when the world loaded around me. Darren’s base was the most extravagant thing I had ever seen. It was made solely out of ore blocks. The floor was a nice chequered pattern of redstone and lapis, and the walls were iron and gold. Suddenly I heard a door opening, and I whipped around to see an intruder in full diamond. This was my end.

However, the guy didn’t attack me. He simply headed over to a chest and took out some stuff. And as quickly as he appeared, he was gone.

For a moment I was confused. Then I remembered that this was a factions server. Darren must be part of a faction. I typed ‘a’ in the chat to check which faction I was in. Apparently I was in the faction ‘TheGreatAndPowerfulButter’.

But now I was itching to fight. I headed out of the base and started searching.