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Tommyinnit wakes up with the insatiable need for ice.
Yep. Food.
But mostly ice. Good shit. Refreshing, even. Perhaps wet or damp but the crunch of the ice is, of course, non negotiable.
“Tommy?” Phil chirps as he rummages through the kitchen for ice. “Tommy, what are you doing?”
Tommy freezes like a deer in headlights, hand gripping a bag of something and a packet of something else. The first looks like some kind of water bag while the second is clear, cold as a winter night, and potentially ice-like.
“I’m making drugs, bird boy, wouldn’t you like to know?” Tommy’s sluggish brain vomits into the world. “Why? You working with the fucking cops, bird boy, you dead, you drugs crack uh. Shit.”
Phil stares at him for many moments. Many excruciating moments, each second stretching into its own, painfully real eternity.
Tommy shoves the cold packet into his mouth and books it down the hall, slamming his door shut behind him.
He blocks the door with every piece of furniture that isn’t bolted down. Which is to say that he shoves the bed in front of the door then rips his prize open.
It’s clear, wobbly, and colder than any ice back home. It’s not crunchy though. More like a jelly/jello sort of deal.
Tommy shoves the entire fucking thing down his gullet and for the next five seconds his only thought is, fuck fuck fuck ow ow COLD.
After that it’s brain freeze, and that it’s so, so fucking shit that his first space brain freeze is from space-ice instead of space-ice cream.
Tommy lies there for what feels like forever, groaning because he hasn’t had this kind of pain in a while, and moaning because fuck that hurts.
This is the worst, he decides. It’s so fucking bad.
Tommy is shocked when Techno bursts into the room, knocking his bed aside easily and then gathering Tommy under his arm like some kind of protesting football.
Tommy complains about this. Loudly. “Bitch! Bitch, get off of me! It’s too early for this.”
Techno grunts out an unamused, panicky kind of grunt. The kind he only uses when he’s too concerned to be happy and too exasperated not to react.
“The fuck,” Tommy insists. “Is wrong with you?”
“You. Ate. Coolant,” Techno growls out, first in heavily accented English and then in Common that Tommy can’t recognize.
“Coolant?” he echoes.
Techno huffs, tired. “Yeah, gremlin. Coolant. The shit they keep locked away in the reinforced cupboards so no one tries anything. You broke the fucking lock with all that fiddling.”
“Damn,” Tommy laughs, squirming out of his piglin’s grip, then rolling back up to his feet. “Sounds like a you problem to me.”
Sounds like a money problem, whispers something in his head that goes ignored. Sounds like a reason to hurt you.
“It’s a you problem, actually, because Phil’s about to twist our tails off over this.”
“I don’t even got a tail,” he smiles with closed lips, showing no teeth. “I’ll be fine.”
“It’s your throne of bone you've carved,” Techno rumbles.
“…?”
He twitches an ear, chuffing before he explains. “Your funeral, kid.”
~~
“Tommy,” Phil says.
Tommy glances at the door behind him, shuffling backwards.
“Tommy,” Phil warns.
Tommy stops shuffling, sending the door one last, desperate look. “Yeah?”
“How are you feeling?”
“Pretty fucking judged,” he huffs, avoiding eye contact. “Feeling very judged right now.”
“You. Ate. Coolant,” Phil’s voice is strained and shrill. “That’s for the fucking engine, you chaotic child.”
“See? Judgment.”
“Wil, get over here!” Phil calls over to the phantling huddled over a bunch of weird, metal space tech.
Wilbur does in fact get over here. “I’ve got the stuff ready to screen him—it’s all pre-prepared at this point,” Wilbur clicks, twitching an ear in Tommy’s direction. “You need to quit being poisoned so often. Lay off the toxins. It’s getting excessive.”
“Excessive is my middle name, right after Danger and Sexy,” Tommy defends his honor. “It’s legal and shit. Permanent, too.”
“Death is more permanent than any name,” Wilbur grumbles, pulling out a scanning thing that beeps in a rapid rhythm. “Your heart beats like something half your size.”
“I’ve got lots of love to give and lots of people to give it to,” Tommy expertly notes.
He clicks again, setting the thing aside and getting out a different thing. He scans and beeps and clicks and checks, over and over, for what feels like forever, until he finally declares that Tommy is a dumbass.
“You,” Wilbur concludes. “Are a dumbass. But you're alive so we can’t complain.”
“Hell yeah, FREEDOM!” Tommy screams before scampering out of the medbay.
He still needs a crunch in his life though. Like, he craves the crunch of some good ice. He needs some good old ice in his teeth and shit.
He’ll just have to ask for some when they land on another planet.
He sets aside his icy, icy needs for now. His life shall be cronchless. His days shall be soft and chewy and squish. A sad fate but a survivable one.
~~
TIMESKIP SIGNAL
~~
“So,” Tubbo says one day while the crew is hanging out. “Is everyone here but me some kind of predator?”
Tommy nearly spits out the crunchless water he was drinking, remembering at last moment that:
- His spit is corrosive
- Ranboo dies to water
“What the actual fuck, bee boy?”
“Everyone here eats meat,” Tubbo explains. “Except for me. Is literally everyone here a predator?”
“Oh,” he says.
Ranboo looks mildly confused and Tommy realizes that he said most of that shit in English instead of Common. “I think Wilbur and I are obligate carnivores but Phil is an omnivore and Techno is an opportunistic scavenger.”
“What the fuck were half those words?” Tommy demands, tilting his head and making a shrill ti-ti-ti sound that Phil uses at the end of his questions. “Obli-gahtee cravo??”
“Obligate carnivore means he has to eat meat,” Tubbo explains quickly, falling into their familiar routine of ‘what the fuck’ and ‘oh, that’s the fuck.’ “Omnivore means Phil can eat plants and fruits and meat. Techno is ‘opportunistic’ and eats anything he can ‘scavenge’ or get his hands on.”
“Tommy’s a herbivore who chose violence,” Techno snorts. “Look at his teeth: Blunt in the back, buck in the front, and then he’s got itty bitty baby fangs. Like a chr-duh-duh.”
“Chrduhduh?” Tommy furrows his brow.
Tubbo twitches his antennae, “You know those musk deer you talked about? The little cervids with the fangs instead of the antlers? It’s that but a bird thing.”
Phil has his hands cradling his neck and he coos and oh.
Oh, Tommy realizes, oh no. This is the start of something very bad and possible future mockery and he needs to divert the flow of conversation. “Hey, did you know human babies shed their teeth,” Tommy shares, to the cringing horror of everyone else involved. “If you ever see a child’s skull they’ve got a full set above the baby set.”
Phil, though, is…still cooing. Cooing. For some reason that is slowly becoming more and more clearly directed at Tommy. He’s inching forward, shuffling across the floor.
Tommy sends Phil a halfhearted glare.
Phil flexes his claws, hands held up in a signal for surrender…but Tommy knows that that same gesture’s been used by Wilbur to signal incoming head pats.
No. No, he refuses, his dignity is worth more than this, Tommy decides.
Tommy shuffles backwards as Phil creeps forwards. “Not today, Bird Man,” he says before sprinting away and huddling behind Techno.
Techno turns around, ears flapping up a storm. “I’m not saving you,” he says. “Just to make this clear, that is a frozen hell of your own making and I refuse to go down with you.”
“Traitor!” Tommy hisses between gritted teeth.
Phil makes a low, cooing sound, patting the ground next to him.
Tommy glares. Dignity. Intact.
Phil tilts his head, making an odd, clicking chrrrrpt tututu sound. From what he remembers it’s a ‘come here, follow!’ sound.
He responds with a short hiss, stolen from Wil, that means ‘no, no, not ever in a million years.’
Except Phil just keeps making the ‘come here, follow please’ sound, higher with more clicking. He offers an open palm with claws that really would make for a good head scratch—and does he reallyneed dignity—no.
No, thinks Tommy, his dignity is worth more than head pats.
Phil sends an exasperatedly fond look to Techno, who is laughing at Tommy’s woes. His many, head patting woes.
Tommy has a choice: dignity or head pats.
Phil makes the same series of click-follow me and Tommy is there, grumbling at his side, before he can manage another chrrpt.
This is a coincidence, he tries to convey through glares, ducking his head. It is a coincidence that I am here.
He’s fallen to the bird version of pspsps. Dignity shattered. Ego bruised. Head patted and scritched while Phil makes a pleased coo-purr.
The conversation continues, because everyone is used to this by now. “So I really am the only one here who doesn’t like eating meat?”
“Eh, pretty much,” Ranboo agrees. “I mean Tommy doesn’t eat much meat but he isn’t really a herbivore. He’s like Techno: willing to eat anything.”
“…I don’t think I’ve seen him eat any animal products,” Wilbur comments with a little growing horror. Tommy ignores all that is not scritches. “Is he missing anything? In terms of nutrients.”
Tubbo says, “Maybe—I think I’ve heard him talk about needing ‘frozen over water’.”
Ranboo makes a horrified, warped yelp.
“Yep, bitches, ice,” Tommy comments. “I need that shit. Some CRUNCH in my life, you get me?”
“All the easiest sources of protein and meat are automatically out,” Wilbur worries, claw tapping against his custom made chair. “Since…Phil. So, we’d need the expensive shit or we’d need to figure out what Tommy’s missing from the meat and ice.”
“I’m missing the CRUNCH Wil, are you listening?” Tommy shouts.
“Shut up, child,” Techno chimes in. “Keep distracting the bird.”
“FUCK YOU, TECHNO!” Tommy screams, about to get up when Phil protests and gently tugs him backwards with another ‘follow, follow’ noise.
Damnit. His hands are tied and he has no options.
“You devious motherfucker,” he forces a scowl and leans into a scritch. “Trickery.”
“Why don’t we buy eggs?” Ranboo says, ignorant. And…
Hell.
Hell breaks loose.
“NO, NO, NOOO!!” panics Wilbur as Tubbo speeds away.
Tommy jumps right out of Phil’s slipping grip and joins the others in their cowering.
“What did I do?” asks Ranboo.
“Forsaken,” chants Techno in a piglin prayer. “Forsaken shoat of voided call. Forgive us, gods, for our part in his fall.”
“What?”
Tommy is on top of the fridge, Tubbo is out of the room, Wilbur chose to bury himself under a pile of blankets and hope Phil thinks he’s become an inanimate object, Ranboo is just blinking and staring and damning himself even further by giving out concerned vwoops.
Small vwoops. Little, sharp yelp-vwoops that end his questions like daggers ending his life forever. Nearly chirping, pathetic vwoops.
There’s no helping him now. He’s dead.
“I—?” Ranboo tries to say, but he gets tackled by a flurry of feathery fury. “Huh?”
Tommy backs up further on the fridge, wedging himself between the packages piled up on top. He prays for poor Ranboo—a truly sweet soul whose life has ended too soon.
Ranboo sends Tommy a confused, worried glance, further damning himself. Tommy turns away, he can’t bear to see what happens next.
The cries and tweeting start seconds after.
~~
“I swear you act like I’m hurting him,” Phil scoffs, attempting to tuck Ranboo under his wings. “He’s fine. Just protected.”
Everyone involved nods slowly. No one risks another question. Tommy is wearing a blanket on his head, expertly disguised as a very upright table.
“Crunch,” Tommy sulks. “Mans has none.”
Phil makes a click in the back of his throat, clearly considering the best way to hold Ranboo and Tommy at once. Sadly, physics dictate that they can’t both fit under his wings. Science’s ultimate failure, truly, is that no one has managed to find a way for elytrians to stash all of their children underwing at once.
Wilbur makes no sound, because unlike Tommy and Ranboo he knows how to avoid parenting. Unlike those two, he knows how to cleverly disguise himself as…
A second, shorter table. Very upright for a table but shorter than Tommy’s disguise. If Techno had low standards then Wilbur would be getting extra points for that.
Techno, blessed with such honors as basic foresight, simply laid down and accepted his fate. So long as he stays quiet and doesn’t move or leave, Phil will have no clue he’s here. It’s foolproof and genius.
“Our next stop is,” Tubbo pauses, chittering in thought. “I think it’s Alveha, right? The one that has all those constant celebrations.”
Tubbo is perched on Wilbur and Tommy. At once. Because if they insist on being tables then he insists on being a table lamp. It’s the only way, apparently.
“Why do those two have bedsheets on their head?” Phil sighs.
“Table noises,” the oh so cleverly disguised Tommy says.
“Beep boop lamp,” Tubbo shares his token of eternal wisdom.
“Insulation,” says Wilbur, the only table or table associate left with a braincell. Sadly, that braincell was thrown into the void alongside a dozen traumatized children, so Wil can no longer be the smartest person in the room.
Technoblade is the only one here with a real braincell. This is an unbiased position, really, because unlike the others he chose to lie down in a strategically unnoticed position that also lets him snarkily observe everyone else.
Right next to Ranboo, sprawled out in the nest like a glorified heating blanket. And silent, like a smart man.
“Wil,” Philza ‘pspsps’ Minecraft croons. “Wil, come back here,” he says with a high-chirp-low-click that means ‘Get The FUCK back into the nest’ in elytrian.
Wilbur sulkily stalks forward, submitting to the parenting. Hah. Cringe. Unlike Techno, elytrian whisperer extraordinaire.
“Alveha,” Tubbo insists on continuing. “Probably has some kind of ice. They’re nearby, they’re cheap-ish, and usually have meat too. It’s mostly avian run so they avoid any…unfortunate foods.”
Techno would grunt his assent or give a nodding flick of his tail but he’s still very determined to become a still, inanimate object.
Ranboo is actually purring up a storm though. Vwooping and purring with one hand resting on politely drawn back ears and the other beating against the cloths and cushions of Phil’s nest.
Phil—determined to find a way to dispense all of his affection at once—has one talon buried in Tommy’s mini tufts of mane-fluff and one talon stroking the crest on Ranboo’s forehead. His tail feathers are visibly just…shuddering and rattling and shaking up a storm, his body feathers so puffed up that he looks like a cotton ball come to life.
Wil, though, gets the short end of the stick. He’s cradled underneath a wing, pressed against his side as Phil tries to see just how he’s supposed to pet three children with only two hands. The cuddle pile of his dreams is physically impossible.
Tubbo got lucky, since there’s only so much attention one man can divide, while Techno got smart.
Undetected, he thrives.
“That’s a great idea,” Phil praises, head straining towards Tubbo with a ‘pspsps.’ “Closer?”
Tubbo darts closer and Phil starts preening his ruff of fluff, picking out bits of debris and flower (and, concerningly, a knife.)
The cuddlepile is completed. Techno is struck with the disastrous, soft, urge to get up and stand guard over them, all in one place. On one tusk, this is great for his instincts and convenient for his job. On the other tusk, if he does move he will be subsumed into the snuggly collective and no one will be getting anything done today.
No one will be going to Alveha. They’ll just end up napping and wasting the day and setting course to a moon near there instead of landing.
“Techno,” Phil interrupts.
No. His plan was flawless. His plan was foolproof and genius.
Techno freezes, cosplaying as a weighted blanket with an attitude.
“Techno?” Phil chirps.
Techno refuses to submit. He is better than this. He shan’t be subsumed or petted.
“Techno!” Phil calls for him, giving a squawky impression of a piglin alert to hurry into the den.
It takes less than a moment of this for him to dive into the pile of bodies, yipping a quick echo of the alert. Then, when nothing starts suddenly killing him, he lets out the ‘all clear’ signal.
Then he realizes: He yipped.
In front of these people.
The blackmail is going to murder him fifty times over. The blackmail alone. Tommy’s probably gonna give Phil little gremlin baby cheeps and then Phil will fold like a damp piece of cloth and show him all the calls.
Techno briefly imagines a Tommy with knowledge of every single rumble, grunt, yip or squeal that could set him off. Techno whimpers internally, and steels himself against this terrifying possibility.
“Reh reh? Rugh regh?” Tommy tries.
Techno muffles the response call and glares at him.
“Reeh! Reh reehh!” Phil tries to correct.
Techno stares at what he used to consider a friend and gets nothing in return but a shrug. ‘What could I do?’ says Phil’s traitorous bird face. ‘He’s cute.’
“Do. Not,” Techno growls.
Tommy takes this as a sign to try again. “Ruh-rah-ooo?? Ruh-raagh-reghhh?? RAGH UH ROWOOO??”
“Reh reh! Reh reh! Reghoooroww!” Techno responds, along with a low, booming burst of all clears.
“Oh my fucking God,” Tommy grins, teeth gleaming in the light. Sneering, really. “Oh, I am going to abuse the absolute fuck out of this.”
Techno flops over, muttering into the pillows and cushions and fabrics.
“Aww,” coos Phil. No. Bad.
Techno is a towering, looming nightmare of a death machine and he demands respect. More respect than this. Like, at least a modicum of dignity.
This is just unfair. He’s being teamed up against!
“Ooehoh-ooeh!” Tubbo copies the rest.
“Why? Why?” asks Techno.
“Because,” Tommy smiles gently, looking earnestly up with his wide eyes. “I live to make you, personally, suffer. Bitch.”
Phil chides Tommy but stops as soon as he gives him puppy eyes.
Techno shakes his head, disappointed. “Gremlin privilege. You’re being biased, Phil, just ‘cause Tommy’s the youngest. Fucking biased.”
“I love all my chicks equally,” argues Phil as he cards his talons through Tommy’s hair.
“Woo-oo-or-eh?” tries Ranboo.
Techno goes completely limp. Then he decides to gently roll onto Phil and the rest, sighing mournfully as they clamber and clamor away.
“JESUS—!”
“Shit—!”
“This is why you're the least favorite child—!”
Techno gasps. “Oh my blood,” he holds a hand to his chest. “You…you cruel and unusual arguable father figure.”
“I am your father,” Phil says.
Tommy bursts into puffing giggles, then babbles about ‘wars in stars’ and ‘fathers’ and something about ‘move’ in English.
“You made a reference,” Tubbo explains.
“So, Alveha, huh?” Phil brings up something actually relevant. “Alveha…I think they’ve got a great deal on meat for elytrian run ships. Hmm…if we head there though…there have been rumors…”
Wilbur chimes in. “Rumors of what?”
Tommy recovers from his yippy, huffy laughing fit and perks up, eyes wide with curiosity.
“A monster,” Phil admits with reluctance in his voice, wings twitching up. “A monster that bellows late into the night, a monster that…that seems to be responsible for quite a few…livestock losses. The farmers near the festival grounds in the city have reported eerie singing, like the voice of Death Herself, and—well it’s basically a pretty bad time.”
“Phil,” Tommy starts, voice unusually quiet.
Phil drapes one of his wings over the human’s back like a large, weighty blanket. “…yes?”
“Do they have,” Tommy’s face contorts and twists into something almost pained. “The CRUNCH I require?? Do they have ice or frozen water or whatever the fuck you people call a nice good cube of cronchity monchity?”
“What?!” asks multiple people in the room.
“HEH??” asks Techno.
“What?” Tommy rolls his shoulders, grinning. “I told you I need ice. I need that good fucking crunch between my teeth again.”
“I still don’t see why we can’t get e—?” Ranboo is cut off by the fact that he’s been tackled again.
“I’m not saving him,” Techno comments. “He’s damned himself.”
There are many hums and noises of general agreement.
~~
By the time they get their shit together long enough for someone to start piloting the ship towards Alveha’s moon, it’s the diurnal species’s bedtime.
Wilbur, though, is awake. Ranboo as well, though that’s probably because Ranboo seems to be working on some kind of 48 hour day/night cycle.
Wilbur is less so nocturnal and more so…well his active hours start in what’s technically the early morning. If by early, you mean 2 AM. And then those hours continue until 7 PM, at which point he sleeps like the dead.
It leaves a lot of time for socializing later in the day but his ‘breakfasts’ with the crew are really more of a lunch.
This is the only time Wilbur can indulge in his favorite meal: Egg.
Egg is the best delicacy in the entire universe. In every universe. And you can scavenge his ability to eat Egg out of his fallen tail.
Wilbur. Needs. Egg.
But Phil says no Egg, like the cruel and unusual father he is.
So Wilbur must eat his favorite meals at 2 AM, after he spends about an hour doing a morning ritual that involves a lot of yowling in a soundproofed room and a lot of grooming and a lot of general bullshit.
No one can see him eat Egg or his life will be ruined.
All of this is to say: Oh shit, Ranboo is here. And Ranboo…stares…at Wilbur.
“He—hello?” he warbles.
Wilbur stares. Harshly.
“…can I have some?” Ranboo asks, gesturing at the two bowls full of stashed away Egg. “I like eggs.”
Wilbur, after a long pause, rolls his eyes and shrugs with a flick of his tail, patting the seat next to him. “Which Egg do you want? Raw yolk or boiled whites?”
“Hmm,” Ranboo looks down at both bowls with hunger. “Both.”
And together they eat EGG.
~~
Tommy, tired as every hell, trudges out of his room and into the kitchen.
Crunch, he thinks mournfully. Munch, he ponders upon his existence.
“Egg,” hisses Wilbur. “Is amazing. But, Ranboo, if you ever tell Phil he’s going to murder us both. It’s an elytrian thing.”
Ranboo responds, “But I don’t get it? Isn’t he a predatory bird, don’t birds eat other species of bird all the time? And besides, when I mentioned it he just…started a snuggle pile.”
Oh poor ignorant Boob, thinks Tommy as wanders around the kitchen.
“Yeah. Because his default instinct when someone implies they’re going to eat eggs is to protect the nest,” Wilbur explains. “It’s like Techno with his alarm calls, you with the sound of water, or Tommy with his weird…ok, I don’t know if that’s a human thing but whenever you imply you’ll eat primate meat, he gets weird about it.”
“He does get weird. I mean, I don’t react whenever Techno brings in packetfuls of lagomorph-insectoid meats.”
Oh, realizes Tommy, it is way too fucking early for this kind of whiplash.
So Tommy chooses to climb the fridge again.
It’s ridiculously easy to climb the furniture. He’s pretty sure someone propped up a ladder besides the fridge for his sake, but he doesn’t use it.
No, instead he grapples with the metal and scrambles up the side, knocking down a few boxes before he manages to get a solid grip and heave himself onto the top.
He leans against the wall and watches the peons on the ground. No wonder Tubbo’s got so much hubris, this is great!
He finally has the height advantage over Ranboo.
“Shit, Tommy, why are you awake?!” Wilbur startles, ears shooting right up. “It’s like 2 in the morning, you’re not supposed to be up, how are you even that energetic!”
Tommy beams down. “I dunno, man. Sleep is for the fucking weak. Sides, I’m having like…a bad time. Sleeping. So. None for me.”
“Humans naturally sleep in two shifts, separated by a brief period of wakefulness,” Ranboo says, and he’s definitely reciting some space textbook. “Like piglins, except they can delay their sleep for a much longer time.”
Wilbur’s expression softens and melts into something unbearably soft. Tommy makes a stubborn ‘tri-tah-tri-tah,’ that means something like fuck you, bitch.
Maybe.
He hasn’t asked but it does make Wilbur go, “You’ll make me cry,” so overall he’s winning today.
“Humans sleep for 8 hours,” Tommy corrects. “8 hours straight. Or 6. Or 10. It varies but I have functioned perfectly fine on 2 hours of sleep.”
“No, you didn’t function fine. You fucking walked into a wall, Tommy, and then you started weeping.”
Tommy shouts down at Wil. “And I walked into that wall with the grace of a thousand dying swans! It’s not my fault SOME PEOPLE place walls in the worst places.”
Wilbur responds with something that is boring and incorrect and his argument will not be paid any mind.
Tommy pushes every empty package off the fridge, shuffles everything around, sprawls himself out on the available space and then stares into space. Just like the founding fathers intended.
~~
“WAKE THE FUCK UP, WE’ RE LEAVING!!” announces Philza.
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” shrieks Tommy.
“I LOOKED INTO IT AND ONE OF THE FESTIVAL STALLS IS SELLING FROZEN WATER.”
Tommy rolls off the fridge and onto the ground with a heavy thud.
He springs back to his feet, bouncing on his heels. His only thought is ice ice ice ice crunch yes crunch.
Then he thinks, shit that hurt, and stretches out. Something in his back cracks and he thinks his arm made a little noise. Nothing concerning, just the consequence of sleeping in a tiny area.
Weirdly, he doesn’t really feel tired. Even though he’s been starting to sleep in like…double shifts? Ranboo said a thing about that.
Meh. Whatever works.
“Phil, Phil, breakfast,” Tommy says in birdspeak. Birdtalk. Elytrian language, though the actual name is some absolutely crazy series of cheep-chrr-purr sounds. “Breakfast, breakfast, food for, food for, give it back, you chaotic little shit, food for!!”
He’s not sure if he got any of that right. The last bits were stuff Phil chirps out everytime someone steals his stuff so Tommy’s assuming it means ‘give me that.’
“Food for titoruru,” Phil warbles.
“Tito,” a purse of lips, like a squeak, then a tap of the tongue. “Gagharah,” he fucks up at the warble.
Gargling. What he needs is to garble. Or gobble. There’s an ‘r’ ish sound at the start.“Rrrruurruu,” he finishes.
Every alien language is a bit tough to mimic but every time Tommy gets even remotely close to sounding like them, the crew reacts with dumbfounded shock. Like they just saw a parrot mimic a gunshot or a bear speak perfect english, instead of a human fucking up the language.
That shock is nowhere near the mix of baffled, amazed joy lighting up Phil’s face right now. “Titotito ruru wohwohwoh toto ti titi to!”
“I uh,” Tommy pauses. “Food for titoruru.”
Phil devolves into cooing and ‘pspsps’ sounds. “Anything for you, titoruru,” he croons.
“I am a death monster, I am like—Phil, I could maul you,” Tommy protests. “I won’t but I definitely could. No pspsps. You can’t tahtatatatu at me,” he continues. “I’m better than that, Phil, I am.”
Phil murmurs something that might be Techno’s name but in Elytrian. He says it at Techno most of the time—a distinctive squawking sound. “Weh-quawah aduugh-ji.”
“That better be respect, Old Man,” Tommy complains, half asleep on the table. “Re—respect,” he yawns. “Look at me, I’m respectable.”
“Very much so,” Phil agrees with what sounds dangerously close to sarcasm. “Of course you are. The most respectable ch—the most admirable human in the crew.”
Tommy squints his eyes at him. “Sounds like mockery. I dunno, seems like your fucking laughing, mate, I could—listen I’m basically the most dangerous thing in any given room,” Tommy isn’t even lying about that bit. “So like. No pspsps bullshit is gonna work on me.”
“Pspsps,” from behind, in someone else’s voice.
Tommy jolts up, scanning the room for any signs of the others, and sees…
Tubbo.
Tommy chooses violence, rushing at him and stopping at the last second. “I am respectable, Bee Boy,” he stands up straight, basking in the glory of being the strongest person in any given room. “I am terrifying, tell Phil that I’m terrifying, he doesn’t believe me.”
“Phil, Tommy,” Tubbo pauses with jittery antennae, the apisaid version of a shit-eating grin. “Tommy is a zzztzz.”
Phil blinks. Tommy blinks.
“Oh c’mon,” Tubbo throws his hands into the air. “Zzztzz!”
“Zzztzzz?”
Tubbo falls into a laugh, so he must’ve gotten that wrong. Or right? “Zzztzz,” he repeats, one feeler spiraling inwards and the other curling outwards. “Zzzzzzzzz.”
“Zzzzzzz,” Tommy tries again, hands held in a butchered approximation of Tubbo’s feelers. “ZZZTZZ!”
“See, you just called me a bitch and—depending on the context—a cheating hoyden,” Tubbo grins, eyes gleaming with mischief. “Then what you said is…y’know that needs a lot more explanation but basically you said I’d lick a pile of snow midwinter—which is a metaphor but…basically you called me a bitch at least twelve times in the last few seconds.”
Tommy repeats the same movements and sounds. This time with malice and spite. “Fuck you, Bee Boy,” Tommy smiles back. “Suck a snowball.”
Phil sends them both a look and Tommy blinks completely innocent eyes that would surely never do anything that warrants any kind of punishment.
Phil’s expression wavers. Tommy senses the slightest weakness and pounces, opening his eyes up in the weirdest puppy eyes he’s ever had to do and then screwing his eyes shut in an Elytrian smile.
Phil tries and fails to look away.
“Titoruru,” Tommy warbles, using his newfound knowledge for evil. “Ruru no no.”
Tubbo is…strangely smug looking for somebody who just watched Tommy get his way out of any trouble. Horribly smug…even ominously so.
Tommy sees a terrible light in Phil’s eyes and realizes that he has signed his own grave.
~~
The streets of Alveha are bustling and rustling and…
And Tommy would love to appreciate all this. He really would, he promises!
It’s hard to do that when he’s been put on the space equivalent to a fucking child leash, though. A fucking harness. Phil is happy with this, Tubbo is a smug ass, everyone will burn, and Tommy did nothing to deserve this.
He could break out.
He’s actually pretty sure Phil is expecting him to break out any moment, because he keeps flexing the wing that attaches to Tommy’s stylish new vest. He keeps twitching it, just a bit, like he expects it to suddenly snap.
Rude. Tommy would never snap this in two. He would tear it in two, snapping has a higher chance of actually hurting his elytrian.
“Wih-ulllll,” Tommy calls. “Wil. Wilby. Wilster. Wilbertson Mcassface.”
“Shut your mouth, Child.”
“PHILLLL!” Tommy calls. “Phil. Philza. Philza Minecraft. Dadza.”
“Why does he get a nice nickname and I get assface?”
“Shut up, Assboy.”
Wilbur hisses as they pass by a crowd of raptor-looking things, full of fluff from head to toe with only their faces unexposed. They’ve got the face of a normal human but…then you look down at it’s definitely a bird-dinosaur thing.
“Damn,” Tommy mutters under his breath. “The sphinxes got way fucking ugly out here.”
Phil looks enraptured with the raptors, staring at them with his hands cradled at his neck. One of the sphinx-raptors (or, as Tommy shall now call them ‘sphinx-tors’) open their mouth to expose dozens of tiny, needle sharp teeth.
Wilbur stares with a different look. An odder one. More…angry? “Fucking fish eaters,” he spits. “Look at them. So smug with their piscivore fangs. They have all the fish in the world. And no souls.”
“Tiny little fangs,” Phil coos. “Oh, look at them, they’ve got tiny egg teeth like our titoruru.”
Wilbur sounds like a cat getting jumped by a crocodile, shrill and deep and layered all at once. “Phil, you know my opinion on Titurapods.”
“Just because a Titurapod ate your disturbing salmon wife,” Phil scolds, his voice level and calm, as if anything he just said makes any fucking sense. “Does not mean you get to judge me for liking their teeth. Besides, you know the Elytrian and Titurapod trade relations—this whole planet is run by them, the alliance will help us negotiate.”
“Craragh rrrrr,” one of the Sphinx-tors growls at them. “Crahaah…hkgrk.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Tommy says. “Or I’m glad for your win. I’ve got 0 fucking clue what your saying.”
Phil tweets something out in an odd, growling way. Then he translates. “This is Bob from Accounting,” he says. “Kind of. The uh…well the farming planet equivalent to an accountant who handles most interplanetary dealings.”
“That is the fucking evilest spirit from the evilest hells ever created by any sun ever,” Wilbur snarls.
“Grrkrrrr mrrrrpt hmrrptu,” Bob from Accounting says.
Phil says, “Ok, that’s…some kind of language, by the gales,” the wing unattached to Tommy shifts higher, like it’s trying to stay folded but something is tugging it upwards. Damn. Bird man is mad. “He’s my son, Bob, he’s flock. Shut your fucking mouth.”
“That is out of hand,” Phil’s wings snap open so quickly that the leash literally tears in two. “Winds rest my gizzard, may your chewing stones never settle.”
The titurapod holds up their claws in a way that makes Phil audibly gasp.
Tommy copies it immediately, trying to learn the Space Middle Finger. He will use this future knowledge for evil. “Fucking shit,” he curses.
He may not have a teacher but he does have context and a lot of times where he was seemingly poisoned.
“Look at what you did to our titoruru,” Phil sulks, wings mantled over Tommy’s shoulders. “Look at him, he has access to swear words now.”
“Hgrrrrrrk!”
“Listen, it’s hard, respectable work being a single father and I don’t see your ass hauling any chicks, so you can go fuck yourself,” Phil bristles, angrier than Tommy has ever seen him be.
Like. Damn.
He’s angrier at this Jurassic Park Reject than he has ever been at anything Tommy pulled. It’s a bit disappointing, really. It’s a much, much pettier anger than anything else—he’s definitely been more enraged or more bloodthirsty but never more annoyed.
Wilbur sends Phil a smug, ‘told you so’ look. “Hmm,” he hums condescendingly.
“HHHHH,” Tommy mocks, because no one here should be getting off easy. “HMMMMMMMM. That’s what you sound like, Wil, that’s what you fucking sound like.”
“THIS HOUSE IS A NIGHTMARE!”
Ranboo and Tubbo have wandered off by now. Tommy notices this and then realizes that Techno is gone too.
Hmm. That’s not a good sign. That’s not even remotely a good sign.
So Tommy starts actually paying attention to shit.
It’s all murmuring and muttering nonsense. He can’t tell what’s meaningless white noise and what’s foreign language and what’s just self expression.
But…what he can tell is what’s suspicious.
A rooster call. Then a buzzing.
And Tommy knows where to head.
~~
“Hmm,” Ranboo hums as he overlooks the eggs. “Hmmm.”
“Don’t get ‘em,” Techno grunts. “Ranboo, don’t.”
Ranboo reaches slowly over. “But…but egg. And I mean, how is Phil going to know?”
“Do not. You saw how he reacted to the mention of it,” Techno chuffs, tail swishing ever so slightly in irritated arcs. “Imagine if he actually saw one about to be eaten. Or cracked. The instinct would be a fucking nightmare to deal with.”
“Egg,” Ranboo insists, specifically not mentioning that maybe.
Maybe it wasn’t that bad, honestly. The cuddle pile. Just a nice time. And affection that someone actively wants to give. No one back home spoke well of anyone else, no one touched anyone but the smallest of kits in any way that wasn’t strictly necessary.
Ranboo never really got genuine affection from his haunting. And then he got even less from anyone else.
It’s new but it’s nice, really, so…
“Egg,” Ranboo repeats.
Techno shakes his head no, again and again, before nudging him away from the stall. “Egg,” Ranboo says, a stolen egg in hand.
“How the actual bloodshit did you get that?!”
“Techno. Egg. That is all that needs to be said, I think,” Ranboo responds, tail wagging. “Egg.”
“Kid, you’re gonna give him a fucking breakdown.”
~~
“AWW, I'M GONNA TAKE YOU HOME AND NAME YOU!” Tommy sweeps a full grown chickeninto his arms, cooing in a mix of English and nonsense sounds. The chicken shrieks in terror. “You are mine now and your name is Cockface the Fourteenth and you’ll be the best little fucking guy, won’t you? Won’t you?”
The chicken, whose day has taken an unexpected turn, shrieks again.
Tubbo, who was just attempting to save this thing, awkwardly shuffles back into the red bushes.
The lush orange grass, the yellow dirt paths, all of it is nearly a picture perfect image of a harvest festival. Then, smack dab in the middle of all that, are a fucking human and a male chicken.
The best part of the scene, sure, but very surprising.
Tubbo expected Tommy to be a little shocked. Mayhaps amazed. Potentially befuddled, baffled or flabbergasted. “Wow,” Tubbo notes. “That thing isn’t trying to eat you!”
“‘Cuz he’s just a little guy and he wouldn’t hurt anyone and he’s fucking. I dunno the Messiah? Do you wanna be the Messiah, little guy?” Tommy babbles at the chicken who glares at Tubbo with murder in it’s eyes.
Tubbo backs further into the pushes. “That…I draw the line at chickens. I’m fine with everything else but I draw the line at that.”
The creature shrieks and bellows, a sound so loud it actually rivals Tommy. It’s the sound of every dying thing, the cry of every creature dragged kicking and screaming into that gentle, long night.
It is the sound of death. “Aww, tiny guy, little dude, tiny small man, little rooster.”
“Never mind, that’s cool as shit,” Tubbo darts in closer and picks up one of the creature’s talons.
Sharp. Very sharp. A little like Phil’s actually, but without the zygodactyl perching toes, with only one in the back. It looks like it can barely fly and its ‘wings’ would be more effective as decorative paperweights than as actual limbs.
The rooster squirms out of Tommy’s arms and then rushes at Tubbo, nearly knocking him over in its rush to get away.
This thing is maybe half of his size, with knife feet and a sharp beak and the pure, raw determination of a deathworld creature.
More importantly: It is running away.
“Oh,” says Tubbo as he realizes it’s running back towards the carnival he just stole it from. “Oh fuck.”
Tommy bounds on after it, nearly matching Tubbo for speed as he strains his wings darting after the chicken.
~~
Technoblade’s job is to protect his crew.
That’s what he’s paid for. That’s what he’s supposed to be doing. And trust him, he tries, rust-hearted souls does he try.
“Egg,” chirps a cheery Ranboo, passing Techno yet another egg. Where did he get this? How did he get it? Why does he insist on having so many? “Egg,” he continues, handing an egg to some random stranger on the street.
Techno is supposed to be saving this kid. Privately, he wonders if the true Enderian magic was Eggs this whole time. “Kid,” Techno pleads. “Kid, stop.”
Ranboo turns, fixing Techno’s scarlet, weary eyes with a wide, placid violet gaze. “Egg,” says the demon who has replaced his crewmate.
Techno leads them away from the busy carnival and closer to anywhere else. Anywhere but here. Hopefully Phil won’t follow them. Hopefully.
Techno is this close to whispering a prayer. This feels like a demonic possession. It feels like something demonic and evil. He’s about to call on some kind of spirit to banish whatever the fuck has possessed Ranboo when Phil hurries over.
“Egg,” says the Fool, the Moron, the Absolute Maniac. “Egg,” the Madman, the Deranged Demon, the Vessel of their Damnation, handing an egg over to…
To Philza Fucking Minecraft, who tilts his head with a low peep, who’s eyes expand to the size of dinner plates in his face, who’s wings spread wide and wider.
Techno collapses on the ground, defeated by a fucking Child and Eggs.
The Blood God. Crowned Ambition of a Dozen Clans, of a Thousand Sounders, sent to the stars and back for a chance at glory, at prestige, at victory. The Champion of a Million Fighting Pits, who trampled and slaughtered opponent after opponent for even the slightest glimpse at a life in the stars.
Techno has been defeated by a fucking child.
This a new low, thinks the Elytrian Whisperer as Phil has more than a dozen breakdowns in one fucking second. This is a new, terrible low.
“Nest,” murmurs Phil, wings twitching and claws outstretched.
“Egg,” says the Demon, the Monster, the Bane of A Thousand Stars. “Egg,” says the Damnation of Them All, passing over egg after egg.
What kind of monster have they created?
What kind of monster is he creating?
“Techno,” whispers Wilbur, slinking his way around Phil and Ranboo. Phil twists his neck around to watch them, eyes almost completely black from his blown wide pupils. “Techno, we need to run.”
Techno grunts, stifling an alarm call as his elytrian’s eyes continue to bore into his soul. “Wil,” he twitches an ear at him, never breaking eye contact. “Wil, if we run, you’ll activate his hunting instinct.”
“Well, we can’t stay here!” Wilbur manages through gritted teeth, talking in low, growling tones that hopefully sound nothing like chirps to even the most broody of birds.
“Egg!” vwoops Ranboo happily, handing over yet another vehicle of the crew’s collective and eternal torment. His vwoops are light and small and even to a piglin they sound roughly like chirping warbles. “Egg,” he nods.
“I,” Wilbur shakes his head again and again, ears pinned down against his skull as he scrunches his eyes closed in apology. No, thinks Techno, no, Wil, you fool, to an elytrian that looks like a smile. “I told him about the…you know. I never…he’s become the very thing I trained him to oppose.”
Techno sees Phil, whose wings have started actually flapping while still grounded, whose feathers are so puffed out that he looks like a sapient q-tip or a piece of stray pillow stuffing, whose tail feathers rattle with parental concern…
Whose wings are held in a ‘wait’ gesture.
Techno grabs Wilbur and books it into the woods.
~~
“Cockface, I got you!” Tommy screams as he sweeps his chicken back into his loving arms.
Cockface the Jackass Rooster (™️ and patent pending) screeches back. “BAWK BAWK BAWK!”
“Aww.”
“Wehohwehoh?” Tubbo tries to bawk.
Tommy stares at him. He’s squeaking. He’s sounds like an autotuned mouse.
Tommy manages to say, “You—you almost got it. Cockface sounds more like a—a bawk bawk, you know?”
“Uwahuwahuwahuwah??” Tubbo squeaks. “That right? Sounds good to me.”
“That was amazing,” Tommy stifles a grin. “The best thing, actually, can you try again? Like the first two but a bit higher, maybe?”
“I mean I can try,” Tubbo shrugs. “I’m not as good at mimicry as you are, big man.”
“Please, though?” Tommy gives his apisaid the best puppy eyes he can muster. “C’mon, try! You're like, 80% of the way there.”
Tubbo squints, feelers curling towards Tommy in curiosity. “Ok,” he says. “Uhyehoo! Wohoowohoh!”
Tommy covers a laugh as a cough, hand clutched to his face as he doubles over. Cockface the Fourteenth (™️, long may he reign) squirms out of his arms again, pecking him in the cheek.
“Aww, little nippy kiss,” Tommy coos, pulling Cockface the Fourteenth (™️, may his dynasty bring joy to the heavenly bureaucracy) back into a loving embrace. Fatherly too. He’ll be a better dad than Phil by the end of all this.
“Sometimes I just barely manage to forget that I’ve befriended a deathworlder,” Tubbo smiles down at Cockface the Fourteenth (™️, may his legacy carry forth until the end of days) with the same expression he makes after fashioning makeshift explosives. “I’m glad today has reminded me, over and over, that I have scary dog privilege.”
Tommy gasps, adjusting his hold on his son to dramatically lay a hand over his heart. “You use me?? You exploit me like the guard dog? JAIL! JAIL FOR TUBBO, JAIL FOR A THOUSAND YEARS!”
“The chant of the ancients,” Tubbo nods. “Baby shark dudududu.”
“Dudududu milfhunter 420,” Tommy nods back.
His son, Cockface the Fourteenth (™️, may our terrible and gracious ruler finally decide on a worthy slogan) starts rooster calling into the night. “COCKADOODLE DOO!”
“Eyeheeyeheyeheyeheee!” Tubbo squeaks back to the rooster.
“Tubbo, do it again! The squeaking,” Tommy would clap if he had the hands available. “Higher! Do it higher!!”
“Ahuahuheehhahaeheheh?!” he tries. “Ohuoh-wohwohwoh??”
Tommy decides fuck it, and tucks Cockface the Fourteenth (™️, I’m sick of writing these slogans, this is the last one) under his arm like a football. Then he picks up Tubbo.
Big eyes. Big bug eyes. Little squeaks. Little fucking squeaks, they’re both tiny.
Then Tommy just. Starts walking into the forest.
Mostly because he can hear Phil screaming. So that’s a concern.
“Hey,” says Tubbo, who probably doesn’t hear Phil yet. “What the actual fuck?”
~~
“Nest,” says Phil.
“Egg,” says Ranboo, passing over an egg.
Child. Big child, small child.
He has many small children now. He needs to protect the nest. Phil needs a nest.
Phil scratches out a nest, digs up a nest, claws into the ground until he finally has an appropriately sized hole. He takes the eggs—tucked ever so carefully in his arms—and he places them each ever so gently into the nest.
Big Child passes over another small child. Small. Tiny. Both are small and tiny but one child is big and the other child is small. “Nest,” Phil chirps. “Totoru thank you.”
“Egg,” says Big Child, placing a small child into his mouth.
Phil startles because no. Wrong.
Bad. This is wrong. He shrieks and smacks the hand away, bundling the egg back into the nest.
He has a disagreeable Big Child, yes, and play fighting happens but it is bad and it is wrong and he scolds him.
Protect the nest.
He needs…flockmates. He has many other children.
But he cannot leave this totoru alone with the eggs. They are of a different kind, his instinct whispers, they need supervision. Young. Small. Both.
Protect the flock.
But protect the nest?
“Egg,” says Totoru, handing Phil an egg.
Protect the nest protect the nest. Protect the flock and the nest.
He has a hole. He puts the eggs into the hole. He has a totoru.
He chirps “Down-rest-small,” and covers Ranboo with a wing and his eggs with another.
His. Small and his.
Protect the nest.
“Egg,” says Totoru, Big Child, near grown but small. “Egg,” he passes over another child. He puts the child where children belong: In the protection hole.
“What the actual fuck is going on?!” barks Titoruru. Smallest baby chick. Dangerous. Needs lots of protection—the most protection, old enough to wander, smallest of the flock.
Phil signals for totoru to stay and pulls on titoruru’s sleeve. Into the hole he must go. The protection hole.
“Phil, Phil, what?” says Titoruru before becoming very upset. “Oh shit, Ranboo, what is wrong with you, NOT THE FUCKING EGGS AGAIN?!”
“Shh shh,” he soothes. “Pspspspsp.”
Titoruru does not follow. “Pspspspsps,” Phil insists, moving further away from totoru and carding a hand through his hair. “Pspspspspsp. Nest. Follow. Follow, titoruru.”
His second totoru is held in the first’s arms. Right. Correct. This is how it should be, older staying with younger and oldest staying with youngest and all children in the protection hole.
Titoruru must go in the protection hole.
Phil takes his hand away, settling down at the edge of the protection hole. There is room for Big chicks and Small chicks and all the chicks and every chick.
Protection hole. Protect the flock. Protect the nest.
“Goddamnit,” Titoruru sighs. He lets himself be led to the Pit of Protection and Of Nesting and Of Rightness. “Really, Ranboo?”
Totoru chirps. Small chirp. Adorable chirp. In need of rewards, chirp. “In my defense,” he says. “Egg.”
Phil tackles the child in need of protection and affection and reward.
“Ranboo, you’ve damned us all.”
~~
Techno is in a tree.
Now, the reason why doesn’t matter so much as the reason how.
Firstly? Panic.
Secondly? Panic.
And thirdly? Thirdly was, unexpectedly, panic.
The body does a lot of strange and miraculous things when you are in danger and your automatic flight or fight response produces enough adrenaline to kill the average space dweller.
Sadly, Techno is not human. So his brain’s adrenaline boost comes multiple seconds after he’s started running, and at that point his brain had 0 fucking clue what to do with the sudden chemical rush.
So.
Tree. No sign of danger. But high ground.
Wilbur is also here. Panic plus chemicals equals: Picking up your sounder-brother and throwing them up a tree.
This isn’t the best look. The Crowned Champion of the Piglins: hiding in a tree and hoping to god that a broody elytrian doesn’t find him.
But you know what looks worse than this? Cuddle piles.
Demonic cuddle piles.
“Techno,” Wilbur rumbles lowly, voice so faint that even a piglin’s ears can barely pick up on it. An elytrian’s ears though… “Techno, is he gone?”
A strangled, painful shriek comes out from the woods. Not far away. Not far away at all. But climbing down would definitely get them found.
“I think,” Techno strains his snout and ears. “I don’t think he’s hunting. He’s…I think he’s calming down.”
Another piercing bellow. Different. Warped. This shriek is…it isn’t from Phil. That isn’t the kind of sound any elytrian makes, no matter how broody, no matter how upset, no matter how…
That is something else. That is the sound of a fucking demon. It’s awful—loud and ringing and almost familiar.
Techno remembers a piglin word.
Varshai: The call of death itself. Not the baying of the bloodied gods but the signal of the Dying and Gone.
Then, Phil’s response. The elytrian version of screaming, “WHO THE ACTUAL FUCK IS THAT?!”
“That…that seems like an issue,” Wilbur clicks. A concerned click. A click which may damn them all. “Should we check that out?”
Techno sighs and they make their slow, slow way down the tree.
~~
New. Adult.
Bad. Adult. Near the nest. Near his nest and his babies and his chicks who he needs to protect.
“Egg,” says Totoru, Ranboo. His very disobedient chick. Too disobedient.
Titoruru is near the strange threat. Threat. That is a threat and all children should be in the protection hole.
Phil rushes at the strange small adult threat, claws outstretched, issuing a warning call. “Oohroorerrgh?!”
“AAAAAAAAGGHHHHH,” says the strange threat.
“RRROWRRAAGGH!” Phil responds, wings snapping open.
“BAWWWWK!” the strange threat attacks him in a flurry of feathers and fury.
Phil lashes out, grabbing for the monster threat adult who threatens the nest, shrieking in agony as claws dig into his shoulder. Protect them protect them. “ARGHREEEGHH!”
“AHAHAHAHHAH!” yip-barks titoruru. “Are you getting beat by a fucking chicken?”
“Boo,” comments Tubbo. “Booo! You get a 0/10.”
Phil blinks.
Phil…comes back to himself.
“Egg,” says Totoru, handing him nothing at all.
“How many fucking eggs did you even have?” asks Tommy.
“Ranboo, why?” asks Phil.
“You know, I’m pretty sure Techno and Wil are up in that tree,” says Tubbo, pointing at a nearby tree. “Like. 0/10 hiding there.”
“Babies?!” Phil startles, listening for his eldest flockmembers.
Techno. “Shit, bloodshit, marrowshit!”
“This is why I never climb! Look at that, Techno, this is why I never, ever, ever fucking climb!”
Phil has toruru to save. Idiotic, dumbass toruru chicks.
~~
“So,” Ranboo says after everyone settles down. “…no eggs?”
“NOO!” screams Techno.
“Please, god no,” panics Wilbur.
“You set a terrible example for Cockface the Fourteenth (™️, patent pending)!” Tommy protests. Ranboo wonders what a ™️ or patent is. “You did get him to kick Phil’s ass though…so maybe it’s a net gain?”
“I mean, I don’t really mind,” Tubbo shrugs. “It’s not that bad.”
“Egg?” asks Ranboo.
“Egg forsakes you,” answers Wilbur.
Ranboo frowns. “Ah.”
“You have an egg in your hand, don’t you?” Techno asks. “Put it down. Put it down and put your hands up.”
Ranboo eats the egg.
Phil makes a despairing noise, cradling the odd Earth beast that Tommy and Tubbo caught close. “Totoru, no,” he says.
“Yes,” Wilbur cheers. “Yes, go forth my disciple! GO FORTH AND EAT EGG RANBOO!”
“I’m disowning all of you except for Tubbo and Tommy and the Nameless One,” Phil whistles and hisses and spits. “This is why the chicken is my favorite child.”
“Oh no. Oh no. Whatever. Will I do. Cruel and unusual father,” Techno deadpans, sprawled across the forest floor like a giant paperweight.
“Techno, if you apologize for running away from the protection hole then I’ll reown you,” Phil softens. “I will. Undisown you. If you get into the Pit of Protection.”
“I want nothing to do with your holes, Phil.”
Multiple people make various noises of stifled amusement.
Ranboo vwoops softly.
“I’m undisowning Ranboo,” Phil announces. “But the rest of you are still disowned until you apologize. And get into the protection hole.”
Ranboo purrs.
Tommy stares in utter horror. “…little meow meow?” he murmurs under his breath, shuffling away. “Catboy?”
“Wow, I can’t believe you’re sus, Ranboo,” Tubbo notes. “Can’t believe it.”
Everyone else, including Ranboo, is incredibly confused. Ranboo speaks. “What?”
“The Chant Of The Ancients.”
“Huh,” says Ranboo, nodding. Ranboo understood none of that. “Ok, then.”
“Ice,” Tommy mourns. “The crunch of the monchity. My ice. I never got the ice, guys.”
“Oh right,” Wilbur blinks. “I forgot about your nutrients deficiencies in the midst of all this EGG talk.”
“Egg,” Ranboo chirps cheerily, handing over an egg.
“HOW THE FUCK DO YOU—?!”
Tubbo flutters his wings nonchalantly. “Honestly, I’m over this by now. We get it, egg.”
“Egg?!” Phil perks up. “Egg??”
Ranboo passes over an egg. “Egg,” he nods, before eating another, separate egg.
Phil makes an even more despairing noise. “No, baby chick, no bad.”
“No, good baby chick,” Ranboo offers. “How about good. I’m eating the imposters.”
“No, stop eating the children!”
Ranboo twitches his ears, unleashing every egg he has. “Egg?” asks Ranboo, handing them over.
“I’ve never been more afraid of a fucking child in my life,” Techno idly notes.
“Ice,” sulks Tommy.
“Goddamnit, we finally got our shit together long enough to get on planet,” Wilbur complains. “Now Egg is happening all over again. Used for evil. My disciple-apprentice betrays me. Ice is somehow still an issue.”
“Phil. PHILLLL,” Tommy shakes the elytrian by the shoulders, dragging him out of the EGG HOLE and onto the peasant grounds with the rest of the rabble. “PHIL YOU SAID YOU WERE GONNA GIVE ME ICE PHIL!”
“NO MY BABIES!” Phil screams, thrashing and kicking. “MY BABIES, NOOO!!” he shrieks as Ranboo creeps into the EGG HOLE and starts picking them up. “NOT THE BABIES, TOTORU, NO, NOT THE BABIES!! TORURU PROTECT THE TITORURU! PROTECT THE NEST!! MY BABIES!!!!”
Techno looks disturbed.
Tommy looks unsettled and shocked.
Tubbo has already left to do better things with his time.
And Wilbur, well, Wilbur looks excited.
“Do it,” Wilbur commands. “Do it, disciple. Bring an end to the madness. Kill the god. Eat. The. EGG.Eat it, Ranboo.”
Ranboo eats the EGG.
“NO NO NO—!”
“This is actually getting very fucking weird,” Techno announces, picking Ranboo up by the underarms. “So, I’m just gonna fucking stop it right here. Tommy, Phil, you two go. Ranboo, Wil, I’ll be here. And Tubbo…”
“EAT THE EGG. EAT THE EGG. AVENGE MY LOST SNACK TIMES! EAT THE EGG! DO IT!” Wilbur commands and demands and all but roars.
Ranboo squirms in Techno’s grip but is sadly trapped. He stares sadly up into his eyes.
“No,” Techno growls. “Kid, that works once. You already used your puppy eyes on me when you stole my rabbit-bug jerky.”
“But Techno,” Ranboo pleads. “EGG?”
“MY BABIES ARE DYING!!” screams Phil from afar. “TOMMY I DON’T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THE FROZEN WATER, MY BABIES ARE FUCKING DYING!! MY BABY IS KILLING MY BABY!”
“BITCH, IT’S A BUNCH OF FUCKING STORE BOUGHT INFERTILE EGGS!! HUG COCKFACE THE FOURTEENTH (™️, long may he gloriously reign) AND LET IT THE FUCK GO!”
“Egg,” Ranboo whispers, picking up the egg.
Ranboo cronches and monches and consumes what has ruled this family for these past hours.
Ranboo ponders the chaos he has caused. He thinks of Phil, screaming. Tommy, crunchless. Techno, disturbed. Tubbo. And finally, he wonders about Wilbur…so terribly proud.
Ranboo thinks of all he has sown and reaped.
Ranboo grins, biting into EGG, a reaper collecting upon his harvest.
“You are the creepiest fucking kid I have ever seen,” Techno comments. “I do not say that lightly, considering the company I keep.”
“…egg…Egg…EGG…” Ranboo giggles.
“Yeah, I’m abandoning you two to the elements,” Techno leaves.
Wilbur joins Ranboo in the feast of two demons. Two kings. Two EGG thwarters.
~~
“Give me your wares, ware seller!” barks Phil’s titoruru, bundled away from the horrors of his bigger chicks.
Phil mantles a wing over Tommy, keeping him pressed to his side and almost doubled over as they trade. His other babies are currently being devoured by his other sons. Phil does not know what his life has become.
Wareseller is a titurapod. Many people are titurapods. Wilbur hates titurapods almost as much as he loves devouring Phil’s hopes and dreams and babies. “Greetings Honored Flock Member! I am Osahta, of the Fishing Hawk Lines,” Osahta does a joyful wiggling dance from side to side.
It reminds him of his eggs. They used to rock from side to side. Until his sons devoured them.
“This is Sally,” Phil mutters. He can’t help but weep. “Sally is also from…Sally sells wares.”
“Gimme ice, bitch!” Tommy barks.
“I used to have more children,” Phil sobs, cradling Tommy in a protective embrace. “I used to be a father of multiple,” he cries. “I used to have a flock. They’re gone..all gone…my babies, oh my babies!”
Wareseller says, “You know what? You seem like you need this,” as she hands Tommy wares. Phil wonders where it all went wrong.
“You’re a good woman,” Phil whispers, carding a hand through Tommy’s down-soft hair. “Thank you. I’m sorry…I just…they’re all gone. I miss them so bad but I’ll never get my babies back.”
Wareseller silently hands Tommy more wares. The supplies will fill the void of their bellies but it will never fill the void of Philza Minecraft’s broken heart.
His children are currently being eaten by his other, disowned, bigger children.
None of them are inheriting the ship when Phil finally dies of cardiac arrest because he chose to adopt a bunch of chaotic little shits who eat his babies.
“I need to find my…my babies,” Phil murmurs. “Tommy, let’s go. We need to…find them.”
Wareseller hands Tommy even more wares. But wares will never lift the burden on Philza Minecraft’s soul.
They are at another wareseller’s wares when a different, bigger wareseller confronts them.
“This is Bob from Accounting,” Phil manages through his wailing sobs. “He met me before all my fucking children were eaten alive. I miss that time. I miss it so badly.”
Bob from Accounting says unspeakable things.
“I just,” Phil collapses, curling into a ball of feathers and crushed dreams. “My babies…oh, my babies…all of them gone…I thought…I want them back…”
“Bob, why are you bullying a member of the Honored Flocks?” asks another titurapod. “He looks depressed.”
“I just want my children back!” Phil cries. “My babies, oh, my poor, poor, small babies! Dead, all of them, dead…”
“Phil,” Phil’s smallest of baby chicks coughs. Of course he is. He’s probably sick. His poor titoruru is probably dying of consumption and depression after Phil’s other babies all died. “Phil, there’s a crowd gathering. I uhm, I think…”
“Bob, what the fuck did you do to him? He looks like an emotional wreck.”
“Classic Fishing-Hawk Bloodline. Fuckers think they’re better than us just because they’re literate and do math but then they kick an orphan and his father.”
“Dude, did Bob kick an orphan again?”
“MY BABIES, I’M SORRY I DIDN’T SAVE YOU!” Phil grabs Tommy and pulls him into safe wings. Not safe enough to stop his other babies from being eaten alive. “Oh, all of them, our whole poor flock, devastated, dead, killed. Oh, titoruru, be still, be calm.”
“Phil, please you’re making a scene,” Tommy says with a trembling voice and shoulders. Probably from heaving sobs.
“Shh, shh,” Phil soothes his chick. “Be still, titoruru. You’ll come down with consumption, my poor wingless baby. Down-fluff chick.”
“Can someone please get this man some mental help? Bob fucking destroyed his psyche,” says someone from the crowd. “Or like…what do you want? I can’t leave you like this but also…no one’s going to be able to work while a member of the Honored Flocks is having a mental breakdown.”
“Do you have frozen water?” asks his titoruru.
“Get him frozen water now!” Phil demands. “HE NEEDS IT! He’s coming down with consumption, oh, he’s coming down with the consumptive fevers of a soon to be orphan, oh gales above, fate be kind to my baby chick…”
“SOMEONE GET THE ORPHAN FROZEN WATER!”
“Ok!”
“Bob, you’re fired.”
“Ok, but in Bob’s defense this guy was having a breakdown way before Bob opened his mean fucking mouth.”
“Bob, you’re half-fired.”
“Tommy, oh, baby chick,” Phil croons. “It’s going to be ok, papa’s gonna get you that frozen water, you won’t fall to consumption, I swear.”
“…I get ice…but at what cost?”
“Sshh, shh,” Phil coos. “Be still, titoruru, no cost. No cost, no cost at all, if they try and make us pay to save you I’ll just rip out their eyes and tear out their insides, it’ll be ok.”
“I don’t know what any of that elytrian meant,” his little baby chick says. “But from what I do know that sounded violent.”
Phil stares into the air. He gazes. He sees. He sobs silently and dramatically.
He is a single father. He needs to take care of his only child left.
Phil picks up his child and leaves to the Pit of Protection. “Nameless Chicken,” Phil says. “You are the only one left who has not eaten a child or threatened to eat a child.”
“Phil. Phil, what.”
“Bawk bawk?” says his new favorite son. “Bawk bawk bawk?”
“YOU STOLE MY PRIZED BIRD!” screams a titurapod, a bit too close to Tommy for comfort. “You stole my prized Makratatata! Him!”
Phil fixes this by moving the titurapod away. He picks them up and puts them down somewhere farther away.
Good. All babies away from anyone angry.
Phil…is…
Phil is a dumbass.
“Tommy,” Phil nearly weeps. “Tommy, what the fuck just happened?”
“Do you think I know? I just wanted ice, bitch,” Tommy rolls his shoulders. He carries an absolutely ridiculous number of handouts from the titurapods. He has absolutely ridiculous amounts of frozen water piled on top of him, as well as a lot of food, and at least one…vaguely egg shaped…item…
Phil grabs the roughly ovular rock and throws it away.
“Goddamnit, not again,” he sighs.
“Has this happened to you multiple times?!”
“Yes,” Phil shrugs. “It’s a bit of a nuisance but no one’s really hurt in the end. Except for me. Because you get to hold this over me for the rest of our natural fucking lives.”
“Oh,” Tommy says. “Can you get Techno and the ship? I can’t hold all this.”
“Sure, titoruru,” Phil leaves to round everyone up.
But what will never leave them are the memories they’ve made along the way.
~~
Tommy copes with the loss of his beloved Cockface the Fourteenth (™️, given back to his actual owner) by shoveling ice into his mouth.
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
It’s actually fucking amazing. Refreshing. Cold. Entertaining. Like water but vastly less boring and with more CRUNCH.
Best choice he ever made.
“What the fuck?” Wilbur stares at him in horror.
“E—?” Ranboo is cut off by multiple people screaming at once.
And then…he blinks. He just blinks, and his eyes…
Have they changed? Have his eyes gone from purple to red and green?
Tommy scrutinizes Ranboo’s eye color while chomping on ice. “Hmm,” he hums. There’s an awkward silence for a little while, where the only sounds are the cracks of grinding molars on fragile ice.
Then Techno swats the bag of ice out of his hands.
“What the fuck man?!”
“You’ll break all your damn teeth, kid,” Techno grunts. “You are going to destroy your teeth. That doesn’t grow back for you.”
“Yes it does. Technically. I still got teeth stuck up in my gums,” Tommy argues. “Wisdom teeth. They grow in your mouth and sometimes you don’t have room so they have to take it out. I got extra.”
“Do—Tommy, do you still have milk teeth? Are you trying to destroy them for your adult teeth—like a piglin?” Wilbur asks.
“Milk teeth?” he sounds out carefully. It’s definitely milk teeth, but the sound between those two Common words is like…a joining? So teeth-of-milk or milky-teeth or teeth-when-milk?
Then again in Common ‘milk’ would be better translated to English as ‘body-made baby food’ so it would be like…
“Baby teeth?” he realizes. “Nah. I got adult teeth. Sides, I don’t think tooth fairy money works with Wisdom Teeth so there’d be no point in knocking this shit out. I wouldn’t get anything out of it.”
“Do. Do humans have a spirit of bounty for destroying your fucking milk teeth?”
Tommy squints at Wilbur and tries to decide how disturbingly he should describe this. “Yeah, tooth fairy. You rip out your baby teeth, stuff it under a pillow, and your parents sneak some money underneath it,” he tries to keep up a calm, unknowing expression, even as both Wilbur and Techno make disgusted, pained sounds. “Sign of being an adult is that I’m getting new teeth, and I don’t even get money for these ones if they break.”
“I heard about that once,” Techno grumbles. “I thought it was fucking hyperbole, by the bloodied fangs of god, that’s terrifying. What kind of god is there to encourage dumbass toddlers to rip out vital body parts?”
“How many sets of teeth do you need?” asks a horrified Wilbur. “Only one right? You don’t need multiple? Why are your milk teeth—those are supposed to grow with you?! Unless it’s working like a piglin? But even then those usually shed and it hurts so bad to just destroy them…”
“Fuck my milk teeth,” Tommy argues. “Sides, my mouth’ll probably need enough room for the new ones. Breaking one or two will just simplify that,” he adds as he reaches for the bag of ice.
No one interrupts his chewing endeavors after that.
~🥚~
Ranboo feels a bit like he just woke up from a short nap and now everything’s gone a bit wonky.
Like someone shook the world about, tilted everything just a little bit to the left.
“I—?”
“No Egg,” hisses Wilbur and Phil.
“But I just—?”
“Never again,” insists Phil.
“Traitorous Disciple,” snarls Wilbur.
Ranboo’s not sure how to put this.
He’s not exactly clear on what’s going on here.
“Huh—?”
“Hug?!” chirps Phil, wings suddenly enveloping Ranboo. “Hug.”
“Sycophant,” Wilbur growls, shaking his head as he clicks in outrage. His eyes are wide, his pupils bloated. “Bootlicker.”
“Toruru chreeeh chr totoru,” Phil chirps in incomprehensible elytrian.
“I’m going to bully him worse now.”
“No,” Phil insists.
“Nevermind,” Wilbur’s ears pin down to his skull.
Ranboo blinks. “That actually worked?”
Wilbur blinks back at him. It’s paired with a gesture full of outstretched claws and a bump of his head against Ranboo’s shoulder.
Which is affection (weird) mixed with aggression (very normal.)
Ranboo blinks slowly at Wilbur and he rumbles back.
“You will never be forgiven for your wrongs today,” Wilbur continues. “That’s a war growl, not a purr. The blink is because I just can’t stand you.”
“Aww.”
“Retribution will be paid in full.”
“Why, though?” Ranboo asks. “No, seriously, what’s going on?”
Wilbur blinks. Confused this time.
Phil tilts his head to the side.
“…what did I do?” Ranboo prompts again. “C’mon I can’t—I need to know. So that I won't do it again.”
“…do you not remember?”
“He is void-sick,” Phil murmurs. “Ranboo, never mention ovular foods around an elytrian. Techno can explain in full. The others are either Wilbur, going to try and fuck with you, or both.”
“Hey!” Wilbur complains. “I haven’t pranked anyone in at least a month.”
“‘Cause the last time you tried to pull something, Tommy caught you in the act and threw a bucket of water on you.”
Ranboo cringes just imagining the pain. It’s weird, hearing them mention water so nonchalantly. Like literal acid is just no big deal to them.
It is no big deal. Because they never Saw.
Very obvious but…
It’s the little things, really, that end up being the most jarring.
Phil nudges his shoulder, tail feathers rattling with worry, and mimics one of the few prayers he’d use to soothe himself.
“Little one, little one, unseen and unspun,” he whispers in a way that’s motivated by love and not just instinct. “Soon the night will come. Soon the stars will glow. Little one, little one, look at you go.”
He thinks, vaguely, that he taught them that but never expected them to actually use it.
Fondness. Weird. Weird but good.
He has the inexplicable urge to say something. “E—!”
“NO NO—!”
“NOT AGAIN—!”
“Exquisite singing,” Ranboo finishes. “Thanks, Phil.”
Both of them glare at him.
He’s caused an issue on purpose. Like a prank but verbal. He’s caused issues and everyone’s only mildly irritated. What was it that Tommy said, about animals that knock things off of shelves and steal?
“I ‘kin’ cats,” Ranboo so boldly declares to the crew.
“NO, NOT CATBOYS,” Tommy screams, running out of the room.
“The Chant of the Ancients.” Tubbo stares at nothing at all, nothing but the ground. “Has Been Spoken.”
“That,” Ranboo notes. “Is so ominous. This is coming from the guy who lived in the End. That was so weird and creepy.”
“Says the one who wakes up at like 4 AM then rambles about,” Tubbo pauses. “The food that must not be named,” he settles on as everyone else sends him a look. “With Wil. I swear, you both never sleep.”
“It’s actually night time for me in a few hours,” Wilbur blinks, shocked. Ranboo is pretty sure more than half of his body language consists purely of blinking and staring and eyes. “I wake up early. Ranboo is…I don’t even fucking know what he does.”
“Oh! That’s a common misconception about Enderians, actually,” Ranboo cheerily chirps, tail wagging and fingers tapping against empty air. “I don’t sleep. Or eat. My tongue is actually a complex illusion.”
“That’s a lie,” Wilbur says confidently. But his eyes dart over to the door Tommy swung open to get out of the room. After all…Tommy says all kinds of nonsense about his species, at least 80% of which is true and 20% of which are lies he came up with to mess with people.
I will cause issues on purpose, Ranboo thinks, because that’s the true meaning of love. Mild irritation.
“Nope, see?” Ranboo unhinges his lower jaw, keeping his tongue carefully sheathed. “No tongue.”
That’s the kind of trick which stops being funny when everyone stops being capable of joy. And also when everyone catches onto it.
None of them have the context to know though.
“No,” Wilbur whispers. “That’s bullshit!”
“Ranboo, put your tongue back!” Phil demands. “Put your tongue back right this instant, young man!”
Ranboo hides vwooping giggles and instead chooses to commit to the lie. “But I have a twelve minute cool down! It takes a lot for me to summon the illusion.”
“I—magic?”
“Magic?!” Tubbo pipes up, antennae swiveling in happy circles. “Can you explode?”
“No bombs in the house before 6 PM,” Phil chides.
“Not everything that explodes is a bomb,” Tubbo protests, wings buzzing in glee. “Sometimes it’s a grenade. Sometimes it’s a grenade launcher.”
“I can’t explode, magic doesn’t work like that,” Ranboo partially lies.
It’s for the greater good. Tubbo knowing about magic explosions could only end in galaxy wide carnage. He loves him with all his nine hearts but he loves having an intact home even more.
Tubbo deflates visibly. Literally. The fluff around his neck shrinks until it's about three times smaller. “Aww, it’s never explosions, is it?”
“No explosions on the ship before the proper precautions are taken,” Phil warns. “Tubbo, tell me you won’t explode anything before then?”
“I won’t explode anything, promise,” Tubbo lies outright, giving Phil the elytrian version of plea-mews by spreading his wings as far out as possible.
“Ok,” Phil eyes him warily, but even Ranboo can tell he’s wavering. “I’ll believe you but if I find out you caused even a small explosion then I’m never trusting you again. You’ll go back to doing experiments under Wil’s supervision.”
Tubbo nods, deceiving no one but Phil.
Ranboo’s locking his door tonight. No way he’s getting involved with that. It always ends up with him waking up halfway through a scheme he doesn’t remember agreeing to.
“You have to be eating,” Wilbur protests. “I have seen you chew and seen you flick out your tongue to sniff at things—by the way, are your mandibles separated into two? Is that why you can—?”
“I don’t actually have a lower jaw.”
“That. That isn’t fucking possible.”
“Don’t be mean,” Phil chides.
“But he is lying and biologically impossible—!”
Phil glares. “If we judged people on scientific plausibility then Tommy would’ve never become a crewmember.”
“Also Ranboo!” Techno adds from the background. He’s been ominously brooding.
That’s a piglin thing, he thinks, about guarding his sounder. It’s also his job.
Is Techno being paid? Are any of them? Should Ranboo be paid? What even is money?
“Tubbo, why does space use currency?” Ranboo asks.
“Because they’re cowards and the barter system only works when you’re in close quarters with people.”
“Got it, thank you,” Ranboo nods. This has done absolutely nothing for his understanding of the situation but Tubbo seems happy so it’s all fine.
Tommy is slowly creeping in through the door. He’s holding a torn off bit of parchment with a drawn on…blade? And what could be a gun if it wasn’t weird, with none of the fuel compartments or battery space of an actual, proper ray gun.
He brandishes it at Ranboo like a weapon, brows pinched together in what’s usually a show of anxiety. “You’re gonna fucking die, Cat Boy!” he threatens.
“BAD,” Phil’s feathers have been ruffled. “Bad, titoruru. Tommy, I will confiscate that ice if you shoot him. No. Guns. Not unless you ask me first.”
“But PHILLL!” Tommy complains. “Phil, Tubbo gets to make,” he pauses, gesturing wildly with his hands. “Like. There’s lots of destruction and fire and stuff. Explode but it’s—it’s different.”
“Explosion?” Ranboo offers before even Tubbo can.
Tommy clicks his tongue, a lot like an Elytrian, before snapping his fingers in a uniquely human way. Ranboo’s not sure what that means. “That’s the bitch,” he nods, smiling and blinking his eyes closed in satisfaction. “Been confused on that one for weeks, thank you Ranboo. Now die to the GIANT FUCKING GUN I have now.”
“That’s not a gun,” Ranboo points out. “I—Tommy, that isn’t a gun.”
Phil coos at Tommy. Biased. “It can definitely be a gun,” the voice of reason forsakes them all. The only sane man in the room folds like a cheap card. “If titoruru wants it to be a gun, it can be a gun. He’s going to shoot people, like a little criminal. He’s a tiny murderer.”
Tommy squints at him. “Bitch I could literally kill everyone in this room, no gun needed. I have acid spit.”
“Acid spit has never stopped Elytrian parental instincts,” Wilbur comments.
“True!” Techno interrupts, still brooding in the corner. He sips at a glassful of various fluids. “It’s horrifying.”
“Precious,” Phil croons at the entire void-be-damned human.
Tommy scrunches his nose up. “I have a gun,” he carefully reminds Ranboo. “And I am going to fucking shoot you, Cat Boy, put your hands up. I call shotgun. Literally.”
Tubbo jolts. “Road work ahead?”
“I sure…hope it does?” Ranboo tries.
Both of them turn to him and speak in one voice. “FRE SHAVAC ADO”
“Female Ghostbusters—”
“I’m an adult virgin!”
“I’m sad—I know, David.”
“BABY SHARK DUDUDU—!”
“MAMA SHARK—!”
“The Chant of the Ancients,” they finally rest, the eerie echo and call stopping.
Everyone in the room either shivers, shudders, or coos.
“Tiny criminals,” Phil whispers. “God, I remember when I was a little chick, just about to discover the wonders of weed.”
“What?” Techno asks. “No, wait, what the actual fuck, Phil?”
Phil tilts his head to the side. “Weed,” he repeats. “Birdnip,” he elaborates. “It’s a drug.”
“What the actual fuck?” Tommy asks.
“HEH?!” Techno ‘heh’s.
“You can’t do drugs,” he insists. “I did but it was a different time. A much less expensive, much more uh…much different time in the galaxy.”
Tubbo snorts. “That never stopped me.”
“Young man,” Phil scolds. “You are not to do drugs until you’re at least 120 years old. Or…40 years of age. Before then, settle.”
“You couldn’t stop me if you tried, Old Man, I know of hallucinogenic bullshit you couldn’t even dream of,” Tubbo hisses.
“You are adorable and horrifying,” Phil says.
Ranboo tries to keep up with what’s going on. At this point, he’s given up.
Ranboo rushes over to a brooding Techno.
Techno eyes him wearily, patting the seat next to him a chuff. “Go on,” he nods.
Ranboo takes a seat and together they watch the chaos grow without ever being direct participants in it.
It’s nice.
Weird, but nice.
Family is weird…
But Love? Love is very nice.
~💟~