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Alan hadn't been to the library in maybe two years. It took half an hour of digging just to find his library card. Why the hell did he agree to this? What the hell was he getting into? But, when the five human children that inexplicably showed up in his house today were all begging to see some "human books" - a movement spearheaded by Yellow - he really couldn't say no.
It had taken a while for things to... calm down, since the sticks (well, they weren't anymore) showed up. There was the initial shock, confusion, and horror, in that order. None of them knew why it happened - one moment, Alan was animating and watching his sticks hang out on the computer's couch, and the next moment there was a bright light and five color-coded kids crashing down on top of him. But whatever the reason, the digital stick figures he'd been passively taking care of for years were all human now, and they seemed to be stuck here, and no one had any better ideas for what to do at the moment, so library it was.
"Alaaaaaan, come on, let's go!" Red whined, with an accompanying punch to Alan's arm. He was bouncing on his feet, completely forgetting his distress in the wake of getting to see such a new exciting place. The four others gathered around with similar excitement. They all looked to be about 13, though you wouldn't be able to tell from how they clumsily carried themselves on legs that weren't used to having so much weight and feet that weren't used to wearing shoes.
"Yep, yep, I've got my stuff, but uh..."
"What is it? Orange asked.
"I mean, you guys don't really... blend in very well. Like-" He looked over at Green, who was slapping his hand and seeming puzzled by the existence of fingers. "Well, I'm just worried the way you're acting might be kind of... conspicuous."
Orange frowned. "We can behave! Right guys? I know how humans work, I draw them all the time! We got this!"
"Yeah, and we've seen videos of humans! We've defeated, like, three supervillains. We can do a little bit of acting. Just tell us if we're doing something weird!" Blue glanced at the others for backup and was glad to see Yellow nod in agreement.
Green piped in, "Also, we don't know how long we're going to be stuck here... We can't just stay inside forever. We've gotta learn how things work here at some point." He paused. "And I think Yellow will literally die if we're here for days and he can't read anything about human redstone."
"It's not called redstone," Alan and Yellow corrected at the same time.
"Okay, fine! But you get my point, right Alan? We've gotta do something."
All of them were looking up at him with hopeful eyes. Alan covered his face with a hand and groaned. This was going to go badly. This was going to go so so badly.
---
"Yellow, please don't touch anything," Alan begged once the group was all settled in the car, relieved to have finally helped them figure out buckling seatbelts. "That goes for all of you, actually. I've gotta drive. It'll just be 5 minutes or something 'till we get there." Yellow sighed, still looking very much like he wanted to dissect the car and press every button within reach. Alan decided to turn away when he saw Red nearly chew on his seatbelt.
God. He repeated the question in his head that he was sure would be on loop for the next however-long this ordeal lasted - what had he gotten himself into?
The unremarkable car ride was full of a surprising amount of remarks. Alan hadn't really thought about how many things these kids had never seen before, like birds, or power lines, or the local gas station. Everyone's eyes were glued to the windows while they pushed each other around to get the best view. The way the drive was going wasn't exactly promising for their upcoming being in public... He thought Red might actually jump out the car when they saw someone walking a dog on the sidewalk. But, five long, long minutes later, and everyone miraculously made it out alive.
Alright. Onto the next part.
As soon as they were ready (which was a bit later than Alan had thought it would be, since it took some time to figure out unbuckling seatbelts), the kids were following Alan out of the car like a group of very anxious and clumsy ducklings. The library door pushed open with a click and the group walked inside, following Alan's lead in a nervous trail. All of that anxiety was gone, though, as soon as they saw the inside of the building.
The kids looked around in awestruck wonder at the moderately-well-maintained average-budget town library, and there were about five seconds of calm before the storm of everyone immediately setting off to find something to their liking. Yellow waved his hands and practically sprinted towards the science section, Red grabbed Orange's arm and dragged him over to the fiction section, and Blue and Green slightly more apprehensively set off in a totally random direction. Oh god, okay, he wasn't going to be able to keep an eye on all of them- That was fine. Yes, this was all fine. What should he even do in this situation? He decided to chase after the party that seemed most dangerous, Red and Orange.
Orange waved as soon as he saw Alan approaching. "Alan, Alan, Alan, look!! There's so many books here!!"
---
Tucked in the corner of the building, flipping through books in the light of a bright ray of sun, Yellow was so excited that for a moment he forgot about his and his friends' predicament. This place was even better than the villager libraries he'd seen in Minecraft - there was so much stuff! Engineering, biology, physics, astronomy... He plucked out some large volume about the history of human machines and added it to his growing pile of selected books that, at this point, was looking to just be the entire shelf. He'd probably have to put some of it back... but they all looked so interesting... Maybe he could convince Blue to help him sneak all the books out of here. Probably a bad idea, but it'd be worth it.
What even was paleontology? He had no idea, but he added it to the pile anyway. Cursors, how could humans possibly write so much?
Some shouting and shushing came from a direction that was presumably where Red had ended up. Yellow sighed and thought about tuning it out, but eventually caved and peeked around his shelf to try and get a view of the chaos. His eye caught something else first, though, and he froze, heart in his throat. There was a row of desktop computers at the back of the room. Only one was currently on, showing a blue background that looked like... home.
Yellow was suddenly very aware of the hands in front of him that weren't his.
He swallowed and put back the book he'd been flipping through - organic chemistry, or something along those lines - and crept towards the blue monitor like a lighthouse in this stuffy, carpet-covered sea. There was a chair, but at the moment he found he didn't care, and so he just stood. Using the keyboard felt all wrong, it was far too clunky, but at least it was something he knew. He brushed a hand against the field of blue. Maybe he could...? No, they'd all already tried to go back "through" the screen at Alan's house. It was just a screen. And they were just humans. He still tried in vain for a couple minutes to press buttons, click the mouse, write commands in the terminal, anything, but of course none of it worked.
When he shamefully traipsed back over to the bookshelf he'd been searching through, he picked out a few more volumes about software engineering. He needed to figure this out, somehow. His friends were counting on him.
---
Alan thanked whatever power may or may not have existed that they'd gone at a time when the library was mostly empty. It had been an eventful two hours - Green tripping and falling on his face several times, Red getting yelled at by staff for being too loud, Yellow running for Alan in a panic to ask why he was "leaking" (he'd gotten a papercut and it was bleeding), Alan barely stopping Orange and Green from having a "book fight", Blue trying to eat an eraser, Blue choking on said eraser, everyone getting a firsthand eraser-centric lesson about the Heimlich maneuver - but the kids had finally each picked out something for themselves and were ready to leave. The receptionist checked out Red's Warrior Cats book and Blue's cookbook, looking to be dreading Yellow's enormous stack that he could barely fit in his arms. The things Yellow was checking out would've made Alan's brain shut down, as an adult - how could that kid be so smart?
It took quite a long time, but they got everything checked out and ready, and headed back out for the car. Luckily, getting settled was a much easier process the second time around, and they were off before they all knew it.
"Green, look at this cake recipe! How do they do this without a crafting table??"
The road rushed by in a blur. Despite the exhaustion and slight terror for what the next few days of his life were going to be like, Alan couldn't keep a smile off his face as he heard the group in the back of the car excitedly comparing their books and being taken aback by the same things outside that they'd seen on the way to the library. There was a nervousness floating in the air between all of them, of unasked questions and looming worries, but these five were still making something good out of it.
They really were just kids. He had known that already in theory, it wasn't hard to tell from the way they acted, but seeing them here like this was... different. There was so much he didn't know about all of them, that he never bothered to learn. Hell, he hadn't even talked to any of them besides Orange before, and yet somehow they still treated him like family. He couldn't help but feel like he'd been missing out on getting to know these remarkable people, all those years.
At least now he could start.