Chapter Text
The hot sticky wind flew through Tommy and Niki’s hair as together, they trudged silently towards the main 2b2t Nether Portal. Walking along the never-ending nether highways that linked servers together had already sapped the little strength the two had and they were still less than a quarter of the way to their goal. At first, the peppery and sizzling nether air was not enough to dull either of their spirits. They had chatted, bickered, laughed and discussed everything and anything, catching up in ways they hadn’t been able to for over a year. But after a few hours the conversation had sizzled out and they walked along in silence, the only sounds filling their ears being sizzle and crackle of lava or the occasional pigman.
These long periods of silence was something Tommy was used to. As a child, he was always able to keep a conversation going with anyone but since Pogtopia and experiencing weeks on end with no one to talk to, silence had become an old friend. He was easily able to disappear into his thoughts for hours at a time. Reminiscing about the ‘good old days’, whether that be the glimpses and fuzzy images of his childhood or the memories that dripped in the sickly sweet goo of happiness that was his time in 2b2t, he didn’t know. It had been a while since Niki or Tommy had said anything and he knew that it was only a matter of time before he disappeared into his head.
Thankfully, he didn’t have to wait long before his memories were the only thing he could think about. Reminiscing about the early days of L’Manberg, when he was fresh out of 2b2t and keeping up the ruse of being a scrawny child that had never seen any form of battle ever. Despite all these happy memories, Tommy found his subconscious particularly interested in the Pogtopia memories.
He thinks back to the third or fourth time he was cutting his wings off since their citizenships were revoked, deep underground, in the cavern that was Pogtopia. Everything had gone normal, as normal as cutting off your own limbs could be. Wilbur had left the day before, silently leaving a note stating that he would be back in a week. Still to this day, Tommy doesn’t know where Wilbur went on his trips. They could be anywhere between a day and three weeks. He usually stuck to how long his notes stated so Tommy knew he had around six days left before Wilbur would be home. Looking back, it was one of the stupidest mistakes ever.
So, Tommy had shut himself in his room, grabbed the sharpest sword he had and told Techno (who was busy with the potatoes and probably didn’t care) that he was heading out for the rest of the day. He was halfway through his first wing when there was a knock on the door. Tommy had tried to stay silent, pretending that he was out of the house. However, a low scratchy voice had met his ears, one that hadn’t been used in a while.
“Tommy, I know you’re in there. What are you doing?”
Tommy remembers only one thought travelling through his brain, that that voice was not Techno. The pain was making it hard to think and he was unable to come up with a plan. Another knock came.
“Tommy,” Wilbur said, “I’m not going to hurt you, I just want to make sure you’re ok. Techno said that you told him you were leaving but then saw you dragging a sword to your room.”
Even nearly a year later, Tommy didn’t know how he had been seen. Maybe Techno had lied to be a bitch and get Tommy in trouble or he just hadn’t been secerative enough. The one thing Tommy did know is that he was unable to act upon Wilburs words before the door was kicked down. Wilbur had kicked Tommy’s fucking door down, his last bit of privacy in this god forsaken place was gone in seconds.
For a fraction of time, Wilbur just stared, completely dumbfounded at what he was seeing and Tommy just stared back, the sword still covered in his blood. The wings were a fairly large length by now as they kept growing back larger than before. Their eyes were locked and neither of them had a single thought in their heads. However the moment passed and Wilbur decided to be something he hadn’t been in a very long time. A brother , a loving family member.
Wilbur had rushed over to Tommy, scooping him up in his arms and about to call to Techno before seeing the distraught expression on Tommy’s face. Tommy distinctly remembers shaking his head profusely doing everything in his pain addled body to stop Wilbur from calling for Techno. Luckily, it worked.
As fast as he could, he described everything since Wilbur and Techno had left their childhood home. Running away, moving to 2b2t and growing his wings. However, he strategically left out anything about Niki, Jack and Harpy. As far as Wilbur knew, Tommy spent his years in 2b2t a scared street child, stealing to survive and doing odd jobs for extra cash. Wilbur had hugged Tommy tight and apologised over and over for multiple things; for leaving him, for making him go through all that alone and for dragging him to the DreamSMP. At that point, both were crying. Both for completely different reasons.
After calming down and taking some deep breaths, Wilbur had put his hands on Tommy’s shoulders, looking him square in the eyes.
“Tommy, I want you to answer truthfully, brother to brother,” (Looking back on this Tommy now wondered why he even should have considered this almost stranger to be his brother, up until this point, they hadn’t even seen each other in months, let alone have any sort of brotherly bond.) “Do you want me to help you cut the rest of your wings off?”
At this moment Tommy should’ve pushed Wilbur off, sworn at him, shoved him out of the room and screamed that he could function perfectly fucking fine by himself thank you very much. But he didn’t. Tommy had looked Wilbur directly in his insane eyes and nodded. Together they spent the rest of the afternoon carefully amputating his wings and then slept in the same bed like they used too when they were little.
The next day, Wilbur died in the final battle for L’Manberg by the hands of their father, only after he had threatened to reveal everything about Tommy to the whole server. Yeah, those were the good old days.
The memory disappeared and Tommy’s mind was clear once again. Now the only thought making a racket in his brain was a single word; sleep. Thankfully, he didn’t have to tell Niki he was tired. Already ahead of him, she was jogging towards a patch of whatever the hell grass in the nether is called, underneath a tree. Tommy followed behind quickly.
After setting down their sleeping bags, Niki pulled out two bread rolls from her bag, handing one to Tommy before beginning to gnaw on her own.
“How much longer will this walk be?” Tommy asked, letting exasperation coat his voice, he was tired, worried and fed up which was a combination that didn’t lead to hearty and interesting conversations.
“Well we won’t have to sleep in the nether tomorrow night and come on, you used to be able to do this easily.” Niki said clearly trying to get a rise out of Tommy.
“Yeah well dickhead, that was before I was exiled twice and had to play pretend with a green teletubbie, acting like his shitty manipulation was actually fucking working. That motherfucker couldn’t gaslight a fucking maggot let alone Big Man Innit,” Tommy let his hands rest behind him, puffing out his chest and pretending to try and intimidate Niki.
“No, no, I’m fairly sure he would have been able to,” Niki answered, leaning over and gripping tightly into Tommy’s arms before shoving them down towards the ground so they no longer rested behind his head. Tommy fell backwards, hitting his head on the tree behind him. “After all, he was cutting off your food supply. That’s like manipulation 101; get the person to depend solely on you.”
Tommy’s uneaten bread roll didn’t say anything and neither did the owner.
“Well as much fun as this conversation was, I’m going to bed,” Niki said, cutting through the silence, “ Don’t wake me up in the morning or I will kill you.”
Threats aside, the night and morning was fairly uneventful. After waking up, Niki ate another bread roll, not even trying to offer one to Tommy. She will bring it up later. However, she did see him pocket the roll from the night before. While keeping her fingers crossed that Tommy would slowly eat it during the walk, Niki started walking, not even bothering too check if he was following her.
Millions of thoughts quickly filled her brain as neither of them tried to start up a conversation. She wasn’t sure if she should be glad that she wouldn’t have to hold another conversation like the one last night or scared that she was now left with her thoughts.
Mostly, she thought of him. Was it the same thing as last time? A different sickness? How come it wasn’t cured when they last tried? All she could hope was that they could get there in time. Thankfully they were almost at nether portal and the deafening silence between her and Tommy would soon be over. She would finally be able to help their friend.
However, they still had to face the issue of getting past the guards. The 2b2t Nether Portal was heavily regulated. Guards from the small but powerful, corrupt government covered the entire place, crawling about and waiting for anyone to challenge them to get through the portal. Despite all this, Niki knew an easy enough way to get through. Luckily she had some friends in what you could call high places. While they weren’t powerful, the ambiguity and confidentiality allowed them to sneak around unseen and therefore, undiscovered. After pulling some strings and speaking to old contacts and acquaintances (most of whom she hadn’t spoken to in years), she was able to secure a path through the nether portal and into 2b2t.
Tommy had spent the entire walk spaced out, barely keeping pace with Niki or waltzing yards in front of her. Similar to yesterday, she didn’t want to jolt him out of his thoughts in case it truly was something important. But, they were nearing the portal and she needed both pairs of eyes to look out for her contact. After working up the courage, Niki leant towards where he was walking and grabbed his arm (it might have been a little too harsh in hindsight but Niki was a little on edge). Tommy stopped and slowly turned to face her, similar to how he and Tubbo used to back in the revolution days.
He was silent, eyes not as vibrant as they used to be, as his stare turned into a glare and he pulled his arm from her grip.
“Hey what the hell?! I’m walking here!” He said agitation dripping from his words desperately trying to disguise something Niki was not privy to.
“Shut the fuck up and listen to me,” she answered sternly but quietly, pulling Tommy behind a pile of netherrack and bending down, hand forcing Tommy’s head down to her level, “Someone is coming to meet us here to take us through a side portal into 2b2t. Or are you so dumb that this servers tight nether secruity has slipped your mind?”
For good measure she lightly hit Tommy’s head, just to make sure he got the message.
“I don’t know who we are meeting but my contact assured us that he was a friend ‘from the old days’,” Putting air quotes around the last bit, “So, I need both of us to be on the watch for a) guards and b) some sort of old friend. Got it?” Once more hitting Tommys head.
“Yeah but you didn’t have to fucking hit me, twice .”
“It wasn’t that hard to grow some balls,” Niki answered before standing back up and continuing in the same direction as before, expecting Tommy to follow after her. Thankfully, he did.
After a few minutes of sneaking around, two giant nether portals came into view. Most of it was concealed by nether rack, only parts of the glistening purple peeking through. Niki and Tommy had both forgotten the wonder that was the 2b2t nether portals. Over sixty blocks high and thirty blocks wide, these twin portals were renowned throughout the world. It was truly a sight to see in person, one that very few people had been able to see and live to tell the tale.
After admiring the twin portals, Niki and Tommy split up to search the perimeter, hoping to spot this old friend.
As Niki walked along the outskirts, flashes of a weird creamy gold colour could be seen in the outskirts of her vision, sometimes broken up by blues or silvers. Fuck not this bitch. Niki knew who had been sent now.
“Come out dickhead,” she said pausing her walk to cross her arms, “Why the fuck would he send you?”
A cackle of non malicious intent met her ears, clearly the person making the sound had little care of the guards so near them, the only person with guts like that was…
“Niki! My good friend, I haven’t seen you in so long!”
Foolish G. One of the nicest and sweetest people Niki had ever met and probably the kindest person in 2b2t. Which only made her hate him even more. However, his kindest could not cover how he had balls of fucking steel . Nothing shook this motherfucker, nothing.
Coming out from behind a pile of nether rack, Foolish tackled Niki in a tight hug, his peculiar skin clanging and even stranger shark onesie brushing against her skin.
“Foolish,” she stated nonchalantly, hugging him back reluctantly.
“Niki! How long has it been? Ages, huh? You went to the DreamSMP right? I’m actually planning on going there soon. Heard it needed some spicing up. Needs to be a little more foolish, some might say.” He laughed at his own joke. There was one thing Niki liked about Foolish was his ability to carry a conversation purely by himself. Oh and his laugh, something about his laugh made you want to smile along with him.
“Ponk and Puffy, some of my friends from other servers, also moved there a little while ago. Actually Ponks been there for quite a while. Wonder how he is doing. Hey, you haven’t heard from him at all right?” Niki shook her head and grabbing Foolish by his arm to walking in the direction of Tommy. “Damn. Maybe I should get you to send a message to him for me. Oh and Bad! I haven’t talked to Bad in years .”
While Foolish didn’t talk quickly, he still had a lot to say. Yeah, Niki thought he loved the sound of his own voice, but his one sided conversations were never fast or difficult to keep up with. He just stated everything on his mind. Which sucked even more because Niki subconsciously listened to every word he said.
“Well, I better catch you up on everything. I’ve built some more builds and planned out so many more. Right now, I’m looking for some sort of large desert to build a giant pyramid. Really looking forward to that build. Wait, maybe I will build it in the DreamSMP. Do you think I could join? I’m sure it wouldn’t be-”
“Foolish,” Niki interrupted him, “I promise you, that you don’t want to join the SMP. Listen, you don’t want to join.”
Foolish’s confused face met hers but he nodded anyway.
“Don’t worry Niki, if you say I shouldn’t I won’t”
Niki nodded and kept walking. Where was the gremlin? He had to be around here somewhere right. Damn she should have never let him go off by himself. What if he got captured? That would be the most Tommy thing to do ever.
“What are you looking for?” Foolish asked, clearly knowing something was wrong.
“It’s not what but who.” she answered vaguely, still nervously scanning her surrounding.
Fuck where could he go? All of the worst situations were currently running through her head.
Someone tapped her one her shoulder, she jumped before spinning around and opening her mouth in preparation to scold Foolish. Instead she was met with the grinning TommyInnit.
“Niki! Why didn’t you tell me we were meeting up with Foolish! This is such a cool surprise!”
He turned away from her to face Foolish, the grin only getting wider and brighter.
The two fell into easy conversation and their little group started moving towards whatever portal Foolish had to get them to the surface.
Niki’s only thought was that she was glad Tommy was ok. If he got hurt or killed she doesn’t know what she would do.
“You expect us to go through,” he gestured vaugly at the thing in front of them, “that?”
“Yes!” Foolish answered smiling, “This is one of my latest designs.”
The one block by one block portal that was sat in front of them was already making Tommy queasy. He had never liked nether portals, the travel between dimensions always made him nauseous. That and lack of food, (the bread roll was still in his pocket) made Tommy less than enthusiastic to travel through this portal.
“Yes bigger portals are cool, but what about tiny ones?” Foolish said, still looking excited, “And yeah, everyone knows that the smaller the portal, the worse the trip, but does that really matter?”
Niki turned her head to face Tommy and together they came to the agreement that yes, it did matter.
“Nevertheless,” Foolish continued, “Who wants to go first?”
The tiny portals effects were still lingering on Tommy even as they approached his and Niki’s old house. Having said goodbye to Foolish almost 2 hours ago, they had slowly made their way to what was once their home. The trip could have been a lot shorter under different circumstances but the thing that waited for them at the house made them subconsciously drag out the walk. But neither minded.
However, at some point they were going to arrive at the house. Tommy’s stomach had so many nervous butterflies in it, that there had to be no more in the server. Seeing all of these old landmarks put both of them on edge, but specifically Tommy. The memories that he buried deep down came rushing back as they wandered the streets. Not only that but memoires of the power and control he had over this server were brought to the front part of his brain. His main thought was; Why did I ever leave? Did he forget about his power in a moment of weakness? Or was he pursuing the weak dream he had had since childhood; family?
Those thoughts disapperated when his feet touched the walkway towards the front door.
he forgot. this is why he was here. he was sick again. now he was wishing he could be anywhere but here.
fuck.
“Come on, Tommy!” Niki called from the door where she was hastily taking off her armor and boots. Ah yes, the armor rule. None was allowed past the threshold. If you tried, Niki would gut you within seconds. Tommy was a little scared to enter in case someone hadn’t followed this rule. On top of that, while it wasn't a rule, she would also gut you if you brought dirty boots into the house. Tommy’s time in the DreamSMP had clouded thoughts like these. The soft ones. The simple ones.
“I’m coming, bitch!” Tommy called before bounding lightly up to the door and eagerly discarding his armor and boots. If his excitement hadn’t given him tunnel vision he might have noticed the soft smile that Niki was giving him. One every similar to one that the character of the DSMP would have given someone.
Thrusting the key into the hole before turning the handle and pushing open the door, Niki and Tommy spilled into the room, heads turning to try and absorb everything about the place that they had the happiest memories in the world in.
Not much had changed. The dining table was as messy as ever. The couch chairs were still not correctly facing the fireplace and the couch was still covered with as many pillows and blankets as physically possible. Five billion caps were hanging off the hat stand by the door and the kitchen probably still had dishes from when Tommy last ate here. Flower pots lined the window sills just as well cared for as they left and the staircase was still just as cluttered. Tommy would bet that everything was the same on the second floor as well.
Niki came back from the kitchen and sat down on the couch next to Tommy, where he had already buried himself in the warmth of the blanket and strangly missing the heat of the nether. 2b2t was in winter and it was fucking freezing. Tommy had forgotten how brutal the winters here could be. Thankfully, he never had to experience one out in the woods as it had still been summer when he first arrived.
“Not much has changed has it?” he grunted from under the cushions, fully content on never leaving.
Niki didn’t respond. Instead her eyes were focused on the staircase. Or more so, what was lying in one of the rooms up the staircase. Him.
“Ok fine, you have convinced me. Let’s go see if this dumbass trip was worth it.” Tommy’s voice wavered a bit but they both pretended not to notice.
He pulled the blankets and cushions off him and put out a hand for Niki. She took it gratefully and together, hand in hand, the two walked up the stairs.
Tommy put his hand on the handle of the second door to the right of the staircase. Taking a deep breath and shaking his hand out of Niki’s, he opened the door. Laying in the bed right by the window was a sleeping Thunder1408. Someone who people close to him know as Jack Manifold.
His face was pale and he had deep red cheeks. Sweat ran down his face and he looked to be suffering from some kind of fever or high temperature. The covers were flung off the bed and he was spread out in a starfish shape. Niki gasped and quickly ran to pick up the sheet and cover him. If Jack had a normal fever, this would be one of the worst things to do. But alas his temperature was below normal, drastically .
Nether Fever. Jack was a blaze hybrid. Part human. Part Nether mob. Like most hybrids, a lot of Jack traits never appeared until late childhood. Unlike most hybrids, some traits were present in early childhood. Jack grew up on a server far from 2b2t and never knew his mother or father, meaning no one was there to tell him he was a Nether hybrid. One of the traits that Jack had as an infant was his temperature was elevated. Not by much in the early years but as he grew, it increased. Until he was around 16, just after he met Niki and Tommy, when it crashed. He fell deathly ill, his temperature freezing cold especially for a blaze. It almost killed him.
And now, he had it again, this time with no cure.