Hey everyone. First off, this isn't the real Minasus. After the real Minasus left my house on that one night, after deleting Minasus the Knight, he must've left his login info on my computer, because when I logged onto Mozilla Firefox the next morning, my former tabs came up and Minasus' Spiral Knights Forums account was still logged in . I asked his permission to use the account, and he gave me the equivalent of "Do whatever you want with it." I changed the entry password (but I did let him know I'd changed it just in case he ever wanted to use it again), created a new knight called 'Minasus' again, and started the game. This was about a month ago.

I intended to use little Minasus here as a crafting alt for my main account, Timbre-Bass, so I just slapped on some standard Proto gear, no accessories (forget you, crazy accessory-obsessed noobs!) and picked Red as my player color (Timbre-Bass is Sky Blue). Then I rushed through the initial missions at the Rescue Camp, plowed right through Razwog, and came out into the Town Square about ten to twenty minutes later (having a Brandish and other 2* gear imported from a 5* character really speeds things up).

After that happened, I had to log off and do some of my summer school homework, so I shut off Minasus, powered down the computer, and went to do my homework.

The next day I bought Minasus some standard crafting recipes- Brandish, Wolver Set, and Magic Set- and crafted my first set of coats. One came out vanilla, and the other came out with a Shock: Low UV. I put it up on the auction house and four hours later, Timbre-Bass had 1.5kcr sitting in his pocket, along with an extra 750 cr that the vanilla coat got me.

This pattern continued on until last week, after I started leveling up Minasus to use as a potential character and not just a crafting alt account. It started last Monday, actually, when I found an Ash Tail Coat: Shock MAX on the Auction House, complete with Heavy Valkyrie Wings, for 300kcr. I don't know who put it up there for so cheap, but snipers can't be complainers, so I grabbed the coat and shot it straight to Minasus. The next day I dragged Minasus through FSC using Timbre-Bass and leveled up his original Wolver Cap into an Ash Tail Cap, upgraded his Brandish and Cryotech into their 4* forms, and ended the day by crafting a CTR Medium Brandish with the remainder of Minasus' mist.

I logged off Minasus and was just about to close Timbre-Bass' window, when suddenly something occurred to me. Timbre-Bass' color was Sky Blue, as I mentioned earlier, and only in this run with the both of them together had I noticed that the accessories on Timbre's armor (he was wearing a Dragon Scale Set as his costume armor, and had toasty/heavy stuff on it), matched more the red scheme than the blue scheme. I checked my account- 2000 ce and 1500000 crowns I ran over to Vatel and spent some of my crowns on a Red Personal Color, which I immediately used on Timbre-Bass. In a burst of light, Timbre-Bass' color changed from awkward radiance to a perfect, resonating red.

"Sweet!" I thought to myself as I ran to show my friends in the Town Square. "I match myself!"

Oh, how wrong I was. I ran into my group of friends near the fountain, showing them my new color, and each of them paused and gave me their honest opinion. "I liked the blue, better, actually."
"Yeah, Sky fit you more than Red, dude."
"No offense man, but your new color sucks."

I frowned. This wasn't the reaction I'd been expecting. Surely I wasn't the one with bad color taste... right? But then, things got even stranger. People who I had never seen, or noticed, or had never spoken to me before, began to send me random /tells.

"You shouldn't have switched your color."
"What's wrong with you? Why aren't you blue anymore?"
"Change back!"

Every time I tried to reply to one of the people, the in-game messaging system told me they were offline. If I tried to send a mail, the system told me there was no such user. The names of the players were strange too, like "Tribesmabs" and "Srbetbima" and whatnot. Most of the names were just random gibberish. But the last name that sent me a tell was what really got me spooked. It was from Minasus, who I had just logged off, who I was not in control of, and who was quoting a line from a very famous creepypasta that both the real-life Minasus and I had read.
"You shouldn't have done that."

I quickly logged off Timbre-Bass and called my friend. "Dude, what the frick?" he screamed at me. "It's three in the morning here!"

"No it's not," I countered. "It's... wait, what?"
"I'm on vacation you dumb [Not going to repeat what he said here]!!!! Why are you calling me? Why'd you wake me up?! It'd better be important!"
"Are you logged onto Minasus?"
"What the [Again, censored], man? I told you you just woke me up! How the frick would I be on Minasus?"

The next thing I heard, was a dial tone. Wait, I thought to myself. If he wasn't on Minasus, who was? I opened up a new Spiral Knights window (not my Steam account, which is Timbre-Bass), and logged onto Minasus. I couldn't log on. My reaction was, holy frick, I've been hacked! Maybe by a fan of Minasus' story that was posted just last week. But then how would they know to quote to me the line from Ben? How would they know to tell me?

Right. I'm the only guy on alternate-Minasus' friend list. Duh. And the hacker must've been trying to spook me out. Whatever.

I logged off again and went to go shower. It was about 9 PM when I finished, and I logged onto my computer to read some more creepypasta fanfiction, like I always did before bedtime. No more Spiral Knights, though- as much as I liked scary stories, I didn't want to be in one- but then again, look at where I've ended up now.

You know the rest. Fall asleep, dream of random nightmare, wake up, get haunted computer, etc. Not for me. My dreams were as normal as mud. When I woke up and turned on my computer, I didn't get any creepy message, or cleverbot.com, or whatever the heck you call these things. I had almost forgotten entirely the events of last night, and I logged onto Timbre-Bass to do some Legion of Almire. Then I noticed a mail notification in my login, and I opened it. It was sent from and read like this:

This game is blue. Blue is energy. Red is empty. Why did it have to change for me?
-Tim

Tim, what? Timbre-Bass? I dismissed the letter as something of a hoax, or maybe just that guy who hacked Minasus pranking me again. Right, Minasus! I pulled up Minasus' account and saw, to my surprise, that it was just like last night. I could log in. No signs of any hacker's work anywhere; he was still wearing his lovely Shock Max! coat, and all his gear was still there. Before I clicked on Minasus' icon, though, I checked Timbre-Bass' friends list. Minasus hadn't logged in all of last night, since I had exited his window in Firestorm Citadel. Then I remembered that Minasus hadn't logged in before he and the random guys from last night started spamming me. Strange. Maybe he unfriended me, but that wouldn't explain how Minasus would have re-appeared on my friends list after that.

I left the Ready Room and went into Haven. It showed me loading into an area called "Empty Room" instead of "Town Square". The caption under it read "??????? 13" instead of "Haven ##". When I loaded everything was palette-swapped, and no one was there. The upper-right minimap indicated that I was still in a Haven
#77, a Spanish Haven at that. Stranger and stranger. I wandered around, seeing no one. The fountain in the middle of Haven was frozen. The snipes weren't moving around. Actually I didn't see any snipes around, either, except for the ones on Warnel or something. I couldn't run into the Arcade or the Bazaar; doing so would give me a Black Screen of Death, and I'd have to restart the game. Every time I loaded into the game, it gave me the same Haven number, the same description, and the same "Empty Room".

After wandering around aimlessly for a while, I decided to check the Auction House. It didn't work. Nor did the CE Market. I opened up a mission, and I found all of them greyed and locked except for the "Legion of Almire" and "King of Ashes" missions. This didn't sound good. I suited up in my strongest gear and decided to do King of Ashes, because I didn't feel confident enough to solo Legion of Almire.

Instead of loading into the "Ready Room", I loaded into "King of Ashes- Bloodstone Bridge." Well that wasn't right. It was Blackstone, not Bloodstone. When I loaded into the dungeon, I found that the chest to change gears was missing. I immediately tried to go back to Haven, but the game displayed to me the message, "You can't do that to yourself." I thought that was strange, because that message only applied to emoticons. Never the less, I pushed onward, glad I had geared up while I was in the "Empty Room".

Immediately I noticed something was wrong. I died in two hits, regardless of if I was being hit by a wheel, by a zombie, by Shadow Fire, or by some combination of the two. The initial CE revive cost was at "2", and I had 100 Mist, so I spent the revive. When I rezzed, something was wrong. Instead of leaving heat globules in my wake, like usual, the heat blots were dark crimson red, like my player color. Since I had died via spiked wheel, there were visible red blotches all over my armor as well, standing out against the Dragon Scale Mail by their sharp clarity. I freaked out, and tried to escape to Haven again, but still- "You can't do that to yourself."

I eventually had to plow through the hellish Bloodstone Bridge, and got to the elevator. There were no treasure boxes or heart boxes at the end, only the red treasure boxes that left nothing except for dark red confetti and even darker red glops of heat, which I sucked up as I walked by. My armor got even darker and even redder.

I climbed into the elevator and instead of a Heat counter being brought up, I saw "Blood Collection". My weapons, which were fully heated, appeared. My Glacius, being the most-used of my weapons, got to level 4 from the blood. My Shivermist Buster, which I had not yet used, got none. I saw where this was going- the kills I got were being allocated to my weapons. The elevator then went down immediately, like it does between floors 22-23, and it took nothing from my mist energy even though I didn't have an elevator pass. However, before I went down, I saw my health bar drop as if cut in half.

I loaded into "Charred Court", or in my case, "Corpse Court." Again I had to CE revive, this time spending the 4, then the 8, and then the 16. I finished the level- not going to even try to describe the blood drops here and everything- and went down to "Ashen Armory". For me, it read "Ardent Armory." This level didn't even look like the real level 26; it was the map off the 2nd half of Legion of Almire, minus Bombies and Deadnaughts! I went through the entire level, being forced to spend the 32. If I died again, I wouldn't be able to revive. I barely made it to the elevator with one pip left, leveling up all my weapons to at least Blood Level 3 and maxing out my Glacius at Blood Level 10. Then it took me down to the "Smoldering Steps". Again, the map didn't match the level: The level read "Stench of Death", and the map was the boss battle Vanaduke instead of the real Depth 27. I couldn't leave for Haven, and trying to click the 'X' on the Spiral Knights window only froze my Windows Explorer program for a full minute. Control-Alt-Delete had the same effect. I had powered up Trend Micro Virus checker at the beginning of Ardent Armory to try and see if this was a virus, but so far the scan was returning clean.

Having no way to exit out of my game, not even thinking to pull the plug on my computer, I stepped onto the battle pad. Vanaduke didn't say his trademark speech, but in his text bubble he said, "You were once colored the blue of purity. Now you are the red of damnation. I must erase you, for your sake and for Almire's."

I didn't even get a warning: Vanaduke spun around, ten times faster than his animation should allow, and slammed his mace into me. It was a one-hit kill. I didn't even have time to react. I was forced to sit there for three full minutes as my time ticked away, and I couldn't CE revive.

I was teleported away, with a dissolving of the "blood" around me, and woke up in a black background similar to the background in the Unknown Passage. There were no platforms for me to run on, and anyways, I was lying dead and unmoving on the ground. My Trend Micro Virus checker popped up, saying it had found a virus. Thinking this would be the source of my problems, I eagerly clicked on the window and beheld...

timbreBass.txt

What. I opened the file, and it was nothing but jumbled ASCII characters mixed in with english letters. It went on for a few hundred pages. After deleting the ASCII, I got this message.

You used to use me and now I have used you. You used my Mist and now I used yours. You changed my gear and now I have changed yours. You gave me heat and I gave you blood. You gave me red and now you are red. Blue is no longer. Live with red forever. There will be no returning to the ashes for me. -M

Minasus. Of course. I had let whatever Minasus was- or whatever was controlling Minasus- onto my computer when I logged onto Minasus' acccount! Now it was messing with me, messing with the game and with Timbre-Bass and with my computer! I moved my mouse to exit timbreBass.txt when another Trend Micro alert came up. After more decoding, this time in leetspeak, I uncovered:

Why didn't you like blue? You know why. Red's your favorite color. You wanted black but this game has no black, but you chose blue instead of me. Why didn't you choose me? It's too late. You're mine now. Minasus was mine first and now you are mine and soon everyone who is red will be mine. Red for the swarm because there is no black. And there will never be black nor white. That's why this game has no black nor white because if not this would happen, but I have found a way with Red and Blue and Red will win. Red always wins.

I was scrambling with trembling fingers to open my non-steam Spiral Knights window, but Trend Micro alerts started popping up like mad, each with one letter followed by .txt, spelling out: I T I S U S E L E S S

I clicked on Timbre-Bass' window and typed into chat, "NO IT'S NOT!"
Y E S I T I S G I V E U P N O W
Timbre-Bass: I won't give up, Minasus!
I A M N O T M I N A S U S

Well whoever you are, I'm going to stop this right now! I said, out loud. I logged onto Minasus' account, surprised but not concerned that my password was still working, and clicked on the 'Delete' button to delete the Knight Minasus. My computer started freezing right there and then, and out of the audio came an awful howling- like Snarbolax's howls plus Vanaduke's grunts, plus the Roarmulus Twins' barks and whines, amplified a thousandfold. I mashed the keys on my mouse and typed in 'M' in Minasus' bar. A Trend Micro alert came up, displaying youWillNotSucceed.exe. I ignored the alert and focused on typing the 'I' and 'N' in the bar. The game froze again. Text started flooding my windows now, coming from endless Notepads being opened and filled with identical text.

YoucannotwinyoucannotstopmeIameverywhereyouwillnotsucceedYoucannotwinyoucannotstopme...

Watch. Me. I typed back into the window. I grabbed control of the game and typed 'A S' before the game froze again. It wouldn't let me click anything else, and even though the window was opaqued and blurry I could see Minasus' figure reaching slowly out from his character box, fingers splayed, reaching out of the screen into the real world. His blood-red eyes behind his Spiral Sallet glimmered with determination and for a second I saw a marred, Armor of the Fallen and Black Chapeau-clad Knight reaching out for me instead of the Spiral-geared Knight. Then it was the Ash Tail armor, fur bloodied, and back to Spiral gear, and his eyes had changed from Normal to Angry.

'A'. I typed. The computer started to steam- literally steam- and I yelped as the hot air the computer was emitting scalded my hands. I pulled my keyboard into my lap, escaping the stream of white wisps, and typed in 'S'. Then it was a long fight, getting my mouse back into position to click 'Confirm', and all the while Minasus was summoning windows and freezing the game. Finally I managed to click on 'Confirm', and my computer screen went black. The steam stopped, and the entire thing powered down. It was over.

It took a full day to get the computer back up and running. The diagnosis was that the hard drive had malfunctioned, causing a full data wipe. Thank god. I installed Spiral Knights and Steam again, making sure that Minasus was deleted, then logging onto Timbre-Bass and changing his color back to Sky blue. I talked to my friends about it, and of the few that remembered me being Red, all of them said they liked me better as Red. Funny. They told me they liked Blue better before. Maybe it was just Minasus, distorting my visual displays.

Everything's back to normal right now. I can play the game normally, and I haven't had any haunting dreams. I, unlike my friend, solved my problem in under 72 hours, and I learned what Minasus really is. Minasus isn't a part of Spiral Knights, not in a traditional sense. It's a sort of program- that's what I think it is- that inhabits the data name 'Minasus' and corrupts the computers that access it, regardless of protection or anything of the like. Furthermore, it takes a minimum of 24 hours and a maximum of 3 weeks to activate- 24 hours for game-only control, and 3 weeks to do a full-scale computer invasion like it did to me. I do hope the school library lifts its ban on me in time for the Presidents Project next year, but that's of no consequence compared with what I learned about 'Minasus'.

Timbre-Bass is normal again. No one, again, bears the Knight name Minasus, although the forums retain it as my original name. I have chosen to keep Timbre-Bass off the forums, for fear of what might happen if he and 'Minasus' were to interact in any way, even be it posting on the same forums/website. I'm that cautious with Minasus.

But to you, reader. If you are foolhardy enough, or brave enough, or have a deathwish or anything of the like, I dare you this: take up the name Minasus and use him in any way you like. Take up the name Minasus and play. Take up the name Minasus, and prepare yourself for the fight of a lifetime, because once this thing has dug in it does not like letting go.

Just make sure that you do not let go of your life while you struggle with this demon.