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“GET THEM OUT OF HERE,” Schlatt roars. Wilbur spins to face Tommy, heart in his throat.
“Tommy,” he croaks. “Tommy, we’ve got to-- we’ve got to get out of here-- Tommy?”
Tommy’s staring at him, agape. “What the fuck,” he says, then, “Aren’t you supposed to be in Utah? Why are you dead too?”
Wilbur’s brain takes a moment to process the many things wrong with that sentence. First, he’s told precisely nobody about Utah. Second. Dead “too”?
“Well,” Tubbo says from several feet to their right. His voice is loud and overly-cheerful. “I don’t think the nuke was strong enough to take out the whole server, but, uh, this is the afterlife, right?”
The resulting dumbfounded silence is summarily shattered when Quackity turns around and decks Schlatt in the face.
“WE GOT FUCKING NUKED!” Fundy screams.
“I KNOW!” Tubbo screams back.
Fundy begins pulling at his hair. “YOU FUCKING NUKED US!”
“I DID!”
“WHAT THE FUCK, TUBBO.”
“IT WAS JUST SUPPOSED TO BE THE PRISON!”
“YOU BLEW UP THE ENTIRE FUCKING SERVER!”
“What the fuck is happening?” Schlatt whispers to Wilbur. Wilbur just shakes his head.
When the madness began, he’d found himself accosted by no less than three people. Before he could express his abject confusion at whatever they were rambling about (the fuck was a Pogtopia, and what did TNT have to do with any of it?), the crowd had been swept up in a shouting match involving a nuke (???) and something about traveling. Thoroughly freaked out, he’d scrambled up onto the stage for safety - and discovered that Schlatt was just as lost as he was.
Which leads to now, with both of them crouched behind the podium as chaos reigns across the festival grounds below. Schlatt has somehow procured a bottle of whiskey and is clutching it like it’s his firstborn child. Wilbur unfortunately relates to the sentiment, which means he’s empathizing with Schlatt. Ew.
When Wilbur pulls himself out of his Schlatt-loathing, he notices that the shouting has grown significantly quieter. More importantly, the wooden floorboards of the stage are creaking - which means someone’s up here with them. Just as he comes to that realization, Tubbo rounds the side of the podium and traipses up to them with the lackadaisicalness of a man who both owns and gives a grand total of zero fucks.
“So we’ve decided not to kill you,” he informs them cheerily, which, fucking what? “We’re just gonna stick both of you in therapy and see if we can therapize the alcoholism and anger issues out of you.”
“What the fuck,” says Wilbur, at the same time that Schlatt asks, “We have a therapist?”
“Yes,” Tubbo chirps. “She just joined the server. Puffy! Come say hi!”
“Hi,” says Puffy-the-therapist, sidling up to Tubbo’s side. She peers at them. “. . . This is so weird.”
“Your job is to make them not die,” Tubbo informs her. “Or at least not how they did the first time.”
“Fun,” says Puffy-the-therapist, who apparently finds nothing wrong with this request. “I haven’t got an office set up yet, but when I do, we’ll hold sessions there. You’re free anytime, right?”
“They will be,” says Tubbo.
Schlatt scowls. “Wait, I’ve got a nation to run--”
“You’re not president anymore,” Tubbo dismisses. “We removed you from office by virtue of you being a mess of a human being and an all-around terrible horrible no-good person.”
“Hey,” Schlatt protests, then makes a face. “. . . Yeah, no, you’re right.”
Wilbur sits up. “Wait, then who’s going to be president?”
“Quackity.”
“Wha-- why him?”
“Because he’s Schlatt’s vice.”
Wilbur splutters. “He was unfairly elected--”
“Says the man who rigged the election in his favor. And you’re going to therapy too, Wilbur. No extra paperwork for you.”
Wilbur is aware that he’s probably doing quite a good impression of a slapped fish at the moment, but given the circumstances, he thinks it’s understandable. After opening and closing his mouth several times, he finally ekes out a weak “Why am I going to therapy again?”
“To make sure you don’t go crazy and do the boom-boom.” Tubbo turns towards Puffy-the-therapist. “You think you can handle them?”
“Probably,” Puffy-the-therapist says. It’s very confidence-inspiring. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Cool!” Tubbo sends all three of them a thumbs up and backs away. “I’ll let the three of you work out a schedule. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go kill a teletubby.”
With that, he turns and trots away. Both Schlatt and Wilbur watch him go in befuddled silence, too confused to demand answers.
Puffy-the-therapist clears her throat. “Do Tuesdays work for either of you?”
“Uh,” says Schlatt. He glances at Wilbur, then down at his whiskey, then lets out a long, long sigh. “Fuck it. Yeah.”
“What the fuck?” Wilbur asks the world at large. Puffy-the-therapist apparently takes this as acceptance, because she beams at them and sends them two big thumbs up.
“Perfect. I’ll see Schlatt at three, and Wilbur at four, next Tuesday. Got it? Cool. Now if you’ll excuse me, I do have to go talk to Bad about omelette-making techniques. See you later!”
Aaaand she’s gone. Schlatt makes a noise vaguely resembling the whistle of a deeply depressed balloon, then raises the whiskey bottle to his lips and straight-up chugs. Wilbur stares absently as he does so, too lost in confoundment to register the world around him.
Seriously, what the fuck did Tubbo mean by ‘go crazy and do the boom-boom’?
Since his first day on the server, Wilbur has been sending Philza letters. He stopped sending them after the mass confusion known as the elections, though - not on purpose, but rather because he simply hasn’t had the time. Between therapy, dealing with these new slightly-insane versions of his friends, and coping with the insane things said friends do (why did Tommy speedrun the creation of installations 4 through 20 of How to Sex in a week? Just. Why? ), he quite frankly hasn’t had the brain capacity to even think about Philza.
Which means that receiving a letter from Philza is quite a surprise, especially given the fact that Philza has never replied before. With nebulous dread growing in his heart, Wilbur opens it.
It reads:
Hi Wil, so happy you’re alive. Coming to check up on you soon! I’d love to see the country you’ve built, so please don’t blow it up before I get there.
Love, Dad
P.S. I know someone who can bring people back to life. Don’t do anything drastic! <3
Wilbur stares at the letter.
Wilbur puts away the letter.
Wilbur goes to his room and lays on his bed and decides not to think about the letter for the rest of the day.
“Is that ginger ale?”
“Fuck off,” Schlatt grumbles into his can. “I’m trying to drown my sorrows.”
“In ginger ale.”
“Ponk banned me from drinking any more. Something about my liver or my heart or some shit.” The can creaks dangerously beneath Schlatt’s tightening grip. “I don’t need a heart, I need fucking alcohol get me through this shitshow.”
While Wilbur doesn’t agree, exactly, he certainly understands the feeling. Still. . . “You listened to Ponk?”
“Quackity said he’d cut my tongue out if he ever caught me drinking again.”
Wilbur stares at Schlatt. Schlatt takes a long swill of his ginger ale and slams it down, his expression now broadcasting negative five times the will to live.
“And yes,” he says to Wilbur’s unasked question, “I know that’s fucked up.”
“What the fuck,” says Wilbur.
“What the fuck indeed.” Schlatt waves a hand at him. “Now scram and let me enjoy my non-alcoholic drink in peace.”
He says “non-alcoholic” the way most people would say “doing taxes”. Wilbur eyes him, eyes the way he glowers at the ginger ale, and wisely decides to scram.
Niki is avoiding him.
Or at least Wilbur is pretty sure she is. It might just be his brain being weird about his fear of abandonment (as Puffy-the-therapist calls it), but he’s like, 90% sure she’s avoiding him. The other day, he’d entered her bakery, then watched as she straight up turned around and went out the back door. Puffy-the-therapist, who was also apparently Puffy-the-part-time-baker, had come out and cheerily taken over Niki’s position at the cash register like nothing had happened.
Yeah, he’s pretty sure Niki is avoiding him. And that she might be mad at him, too. He just can’t figure out why.
Luckily, he doesn’t have to spend too long agonizing over it - because Niki approaches him a month after the election debacle, a large box cradled in her arms.
“I made cupcakes,” she tells him cheerfully. “I’m going to share them with Fundy. And you’re going to come with me, and we are all going to eat cupcakes, and we’re going to talk like civilized people.”
Wilbur takes one look at the dangerous glint in Niki’s eyes and meekly acquiesces. After all, how bad can a talk with Niki and Fundy go?
As it turns out, it can go very badly. There’s a lot of screaming, a lot of Fundy accusing him of things he “hasn’t done yet”, and just all-around crying. Niki alternates between mediating and arguing. The only reason Wilbur gets through the fiasco unscathed is because of the cupcakes. Nobody wants to drop one of Niki’s cupcakes. Not even to punch Wilbur.
Either way, the conversation eventually winds down into hugging and tearful promises to do better. Wilbur agrees to start spending more time with Fundy, and also agrees to stop by Niki’s bakery more often. Fundy and Niki say that they’re looking forward to it. Then they battle it out for the last cupcake.
Wilbur walks away with frosting smeared on his clothes, crumbs in his hair, and a wide smile on his face.
“--and I go ‘yeah, I’m the biggest man of all’, and the piglin just turns and walks away. No manners whatsoever, that guy--”
Wilbur nods along, letting Tommy’s rambling wash over him. It’s nice, these walks they take together. He likes spending time with Tommy. It reminds him of the happier days, before everything turned into politics and war. He can almost pretend everything is normal.
“--even the blazes were better, and they were tryin’ to kill me and shit! Like c’mon, either--” Tommy cuts himself off suddenly, halting in his steps. Wilbur looks up, curious at the cause of such a disruption.
Dream stands about five feet away, frozen like a deer in the path of a speeding minecart. Tommy is likewise motionless, staring at him with strange intensity. When a good ten seconds pass without either of them moving, Wilbur realizes that it’s up to him to start the conversation.
“Hello, Dream,” he begins pleasantly, because even if the man is his enemy, it appears that he might’ve been infected with whatever madness was plaguing the rest of the server as well. That makes him unpredictable. “What brings you here?”
Dream startles like a spooked cat and snaps up straight, blinking at Wilbur. “O-oh. Hello. Yeah. Uh. N. . . nothing in particular?”
The last few words pitch upward in the distinct tone of a question. Wilbur bites down on his urge to locate the nearest wall and bang his head against it.
Fortunately, it’s at this moment that Tommy decides to enter the conversation. Unfortunately, he does so with a very ominous “Tubbo’s been looking for you.”
Dream swallows and nods. It’s an incredibly awkward nod. Wilbur is getting second-hand embarrassment just by looking at it. “Okay.”
“Tonight at the Community House. 10 PM. Bring Punz.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
They nod at each other, then keep doing it, like a pair of fucking bobbleheads. Wilbur tires of the display in a grand total of five seconds and casually jabs Tommy in the arm. The teenager startles, breaking his staredown with Dream. “Wh-- oh. Yeah.”
With that, he power walks down the Prime Path past Dream, who remains as stiff and uncomfortable-looking as Schlatt’s hair gel. Wilbur follows, determined to ignore the weirdness of it all.
It’s fine. There’s probably a very good explanation for all the shit happening around him. He’ll just have to do some investigating.
“So why am I here again?”
“Shhh,” Wilbur hisses, clamping a hand over Schlatt’s mouth. Then he instantly regrets it. “Did you just lick me?”
“Ysh,” says Schlatt. Wilbur snatches his hand back, barely strangling a screech of disgust. He wipes it frantically on Schlatt’s sleeve. The ram hybrid just snorts and takes a swig from his can of ginger ale.
“So why’d you drag me out here at night?” he asks again. “No offense, but don’t we hate each other?”
“I need the moral support.”
“I repeat, don’t we hate each other?”
“You’re the only other person who doesn’t seem caught up in-- whatever happened at the elections.”
“Fair,” Schlatt concedes, and squishes himself a bit deeper into the bushes they’re hiding in. He squints up at the dim light filtering through the Community House windows. “You said they were coming at ten?”
As if on cue, footsteps ring out across the Prime Path. Wilbur ducks down, listening intently as the netherite boots clomp by. The gait sounds like Tommy and Tubbo’s.
His guess is proven right when Tommy speaks up. “Ay! Punz! Dream!”
“Hey Tommy.” Dream’s voice startles Wilbur, and he flinches, nearly knocking over Schlatt’s ginger ale in the process. The ram hybrid hisses at him and bats his elbow away. “. . . Tubbo.”
“Tommy won’t let me kill you,” Tubbo says in a tone of voice usually reserved for discussing the weather. Wilbur blanches. Schlatt’s eyebrows crawl up his forehead.
“Oh,” is Dream’s only reply. “Thank. . . you?”
“Oh no, don’t thank me. I basically killed you last time around. And I’d do it again.”
Tommy interjects. “You also killed everyone else, Tubbo.”
“Semantics,” Tubbo dismisses. Schlatt’s eyebrows are still rising. If they keep at it, they’ll be part and parcel to his hair soon. The mental image of an eyebrowless Schlatt momentarily distracts Wilbur from his mounting horror, but then Tubbo keeps talking. “Also, I swiped the Revival book off of Schlatt and burned it. Just so you know.”
“Oh,” Dream repeats weakly. “Okay.”
“Stop scaring them, Tubbo,” Tommy complains. “We talked it out--”
“A conversation I wasn’t present for. Sorry if I’m a bit wary about the guy who literally went power-crazy and abused you in isolation for a fucking month. ”
There’s a beat of silence.
“Sorry,” says Tubbo, now sounding slightly contrite. “That might’ve been too far.”
Wilbur is. . . struggling to process. There’s a whole lot going on right now, but his mind keeps latching on to the whole Dream abused Tommy thing, and oh look he’s fucking furious now. He has half a mind to just say “fuck it” and storm into the Community house in demand for answers, but then Tommy starts talking again.
“Listen, Tubbo. That’s in the past-- future-- shit, you know what I mean. They’re not gonna become knowledge-obsessed bastards this time--”
“They time traveled too, Tommy. They’re the same people. They’re already knowledge-obsessed bastards.”
And now all of Wilbur’s rage is forgotten in the face of sheer disbelief. Time travel. Fucking time travel, into the past of a future where everyone apparently died because of. . . Tubbo? And nukes? And where Dream was-- hurting Tommy? What?
Wilbur turns to Schlatt to express his disbelief, only to be met with a thousand-yard stare. “You know, this might as well happen,” the ram hybrid whispers. Then he takes another gulp of his ginger beer.
“You are terrible moral support,” Wilbur hisses. Schlatt just shrugs, staring blankly into grass like he’s trying to erase the knowledge of Fucking Time Travel with sheer willpower.
“If it would make you feel better,” Punz drawls, drawing their attention back to the conversation occurring in the Community House, “we’d be happy to move far away and never see either of you ever again.”
“You do that,” says Tubbo, at the same time that Tommy says, “Tubbo!”
Dream clears his throat. “I. . . do think it would be best if I left the server. I can’t exactly. . . make up with everyone, and uh, you’re not the only one out for my blood.”
“So we’re in agreement.”
“We’ll be out of your hair tomorrow,” Punz says, cold and just a touch sardonic. “You’ll never have to see us again.”
“Good,” Tubbo says, just as coolly. “And Tommy, before you start protesting - you don’t need to reconcile or make up or become friends with Dream or something. The shitstorm already passed, and we can’t go back and fix it. Just let it lie.”
Silence. Wilbur and Schlatt exchange looks.
“. . . Okay,” Tommy says quietly.
“Okay,” Tubbo repeats. Then there’s silence as the two of them presumably watch Punz and Dream scurry off.
Finally, someone heaves a heavy sigh, followed by the scuff of netherite boots against wood. “So,” Tommy says, now much more subdued. “How you. . . holding up, Tubs?”
“Eh, pretty good.” Tubbo’s voice pitches higher, taking on the distinct tone of a smile. “Dream, Punz, Schlatt and Wilbur aren’t a problem anymore, everyone’s collectively agreed to stop griefing, we’ve established peace, and Schlatt didn’t execute me this time so I get full peripheral vision!”
He sounds overjoyed at the prospect of having two fully functioning eyes, which-- fucking End, what kind of shitshow did the kids live through?
Schlatt’s eyebrows indeed seem to have fused with his hairline now, and his can of ginger ale has been all but forgotten at his side. “Execute?” he mutters.
Wilbur just shakes his head, trying to reconcile the image of a tyrannical, bloodthirsty president with the rather pathetic-looking man in front of him. He can’t.
“And now that Ranboo’s here, we can go find Michael and co-parent him into happiness,” Tubbo continues, blissfully unaware of the numerous bombs he’s dropping on the eavesdroppers. “C’mon Toms, we got to get back before Boo starts worrying. You know what he’s like.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Tommy grumbles. The thump-thump-thump of netherite against wood rings through the night as they tromp past Wilbur and Schlatt’s hiding place. “I still can’t believe he made spaghetti for dinner. . .”
Their voices fade into the distance. Wilbur and Schlatt just stare at each other for a long, long time.
Finally, Schlatt sighs. “I need a drink.”
“. . . Me too.”
“Let’s go drink ginger ale until we forget that literally everyone else on the server is a time traveler and that the future is a shitshow,” Schlatt suggests. “Or just until we pass out.”
“Either works.”
“Great! Let’s go give ourselves nonalcohol poisoning.”
And that’s how they end up at Schlatt’s place, surrounded by literal piles of ginger ale cans. Somewhere between his sixth and seventh, Wilbur realizes that he’s feeling a bit. . . woozy.
“I thought ginger ale was non-alcoholic,” he says to Schlatt.
“It’s the sugar,” Schlatt slurs, well into his twenty-something-ish can for the day. “Too much’ll make you sick.”
“Huh.” Wilbur finishes off the rest of his ginger ale and sets it on the can pyramid they’ve been building. Schlatt cheers as the pyramid wobbles, then stabilizes. It’s all revoltingly friendly, and Wilbur realizes that he’s becoming friends with Schlatt. It’s horrifying.
“I still hate you, by the way,” he informs the ram hybrid slumped against the counter beside him. “Despise you. So much.”
“Feeling’s mutual,” Schlatt says, and slides another can of ginger ale over to him.