Work Text:
It’s Dusk on Hermitcraft, something that Xisuma says is “pretty rare”.
Tubbo is being fawned over by all the redstoners, which is a pretty considerable amount of the server.
Phil is hanging out with Etho and Techno; Wilbur is trying to impress Grian, and worse, he's actually succeeding.
Tommy is just kinda there.
He ends up parkouring around the shopping area a little, snooping around the mayor's mansion and Cub's tunnels, which remind him a lot of the sewers and lmanburg before the first war. He circles back around to check in on the rest of SBI, no dice. Even Tubbo, who he can usually snag as an accessory to a bit or just as a co-horsing around person is occupied, sitting on Impulse's shoulders and twiddling with a redstone contraption.
False is the only person to look for him and actually find him, and she has to go looking to do it. Phil might have glanced out through the field of hermits, but there's a lot of people here, and Tommy can handle himself. Techno doesn't have enough spatial or interpersonal skills to even notice that Tommy's gone. Tubbo is distracted by his new technical friends and their advice and camaraderie. Wilbur is basking in the attention of someone who actually respects his talents. It's not their fault that they didn't look for Tommy past that initial glance, no matter how much Tommy wishes it was. They have new friends, good ones at that. Hell, Etho is practically their new stepfather- well, Tubbo and Wil and Techno's, at least. Tommy’s never talked to him that much.
False finds him sitting on top of Welsmart looking out at Impulse's giant coffee table base. Tommy and False never got along too well, when she and Ren and the rest of the Blue Bats were stuck in the Dream SMP. She humored him, he supposes. Didn't even kill him for the "Are you dating Rendog, are you going to marry Rendog" bit. It's still surprising that she came looking for him.
She tosses him a sword, a nice sword, nicer than he thought when he glanced at it from where it fell at his feet. A netherite sword, not a worn and dirty iron one like he had thought.
She picks it up from where he let it land on the roof and hands it to him more forcefully this time, extending her arm even as he doesn't make any move to take it from her.
Tommy looks up at her for just a moment and it’s too long, he can feel tears stinging his eyes even as he looks up and he still does it anyways, looking down just a second after because he’s fucking weak and she can’t see him cry.
"Why."
She shrugs.
"It's a shame you can't bring nice things through the portals, with all the messing about with durability it does between worlds. Your gear on Dream SMP is quite nice, and while i doubt that anything could get you here-" she gestures to the cowmercial district behind them "stuff can get you out there.”
"Out where." It occurs to him to ask “what stuff”, but she’s already answering and he can’t interrupt her.
"Out there.” She gestures to the world beyond them with big open arms and a wicked smile as the sun sets behind her, making her hair look like molten glass and her goggles reflect light onto the sword and right back into Tommy's eyes. "Lets go."
--
"I don’t- I don’t think I agreed to this." Tommy is running through the sewers-no, not the sewers, they're called something else here, because this is Cubfan's tunnels, not his own- to keep up with False as she slides across the ice surprisingly gracefully for someone that bad at To Get To The Other Side and the carting parts of Buildmart. "This- this is technically kidnapping, Falsesymmetry-"
"Bull, you're coming with me because you want to."
He's silent after that, not just because she almost sweared at him.
Cubfan's underground ice tunnels are much nicer than his sewers, Tommy has to give him that. Granted, Tommy is willing to bet that Cubfan's tunnels have survived significantly fewer wars and bombings than the sewers.
They’re silent for most of the way, and it only occurs to Tommy to ask what their destination is when they arrive at a nether portal. He gets an answer right away: "xB's place".
Tommy doesn't know who xB is really, or where their place is, but the fact that they're taking multiple nether portals to get there, it's far.
False shows him another road by Cub, this time a lava one, complete with saddled striders and warped fungi on sticks and a carpeted soul sand path for those with soul speed.
"It'll take too long if we use this, though."
So it was another series of nether portals that led them to an intricately decorated shattered savannah full of zombies and pillagers and wrecked houses and also a Taco Bell with a path to a small colosseum area.
False disappears into a small stairwell and pops back out when he doesn't follow her. She waves her hand towards the room underneath. "To set our spawns.”
"We're fighting?"
"That's sort of what this arena is for, yeah."
"In your nice netherite gear?" Tommy sounds a bit more incredulous than he had hoped and he feels sick when False cringes at him.
"Well. Uh. I suppose if you want to?"
Tommy gawks. "This- this is a god set of netherite armor and a damn good sword, you can't be serious, I mean the durability cost alone-"
False blushes a splotchy pink and adjusts her loose hair just enough so that it obscures at much of her face as possible.
"I- this is going to sound really stupid but I realized I was wearing my good gear, and I know you have to leave your good gear behind because of the portals, and I didn't want to challenge you in full netherite when you didn't have any gear, so I gave you my spare set, and-"
"Full iron?"
"What?"
"Full iron? For the duel. There's plenty in these chests." Tommy is fine now because they've both embarrassed themselves and they have a mutually assured destruction of embarrassment that neither of them will violate. Probably.
False nods. "Full iron. Yeah, yeah that's a good idea"
Tommy chucks her spare gear on the floor, sets his spawn, and pieces through the semi broken iron gear and repairs the better pieces as he goes
"Ready?"
"Ready."
They go for a while. They don't really count the scores. Tommy thinks it's probably better that way.
--
They're taking a break, eating some of the golden carrots that are the hermit’s main food source when False walks over to him.
"C’mon."
Tommy follows her, not just because they're ten thousand blocks out in the middle of nowhere and he's forgotten how to get back to spawn.
They go back through a different series of portals, some on the nether roof, some in the nether itself, and some in the overworld.
They happen upon the lava road again and False offers Tommy a warped fungus, and they feed the striders together.
The trip is shorter than the original trip out to the arena, and when they finally emerge, they're met by a giant arch, and then closer, a statue of a child with balloons.
False walks over to a bonfire, greeting people that Tommy can't quite see in the darkness, and he follows her because the people can see him, and he can vaguely hear False making introductions and gesturing back towards him.
"-yeah, Tommy, Tommyinnit-”
False face brightens when she sees that Tommy followed her, and she waves him over enthusiastically.
"This is xB! We borrowed his arena."
A mustached man amiably grins and raises a bottle in greeting. “I would have joined you, but I already made my way out here to Cleo's and it's such a pain getting there and back, y'know?"
False gestures next to a zombified woman with some stitches that Tommy can’t be sure whether they’re in her clothes or her body in the dark. "This is Cleo- she lives here, and this is her zoo."
Cleo nods in greeting, raising her bottle like xB did.
The third person standing near xB and Cleo is an old man with a truly astoundingly long beard. He starts speaking right as False does, and waves her off.
"I'm TinFoilChef, y’all mostly call me TFC though."
He sticks his hand out and waits, and Tommy's brain eventually connects that he needs to shake it after an odd minute of silence.
"Nice to meet you sir."
False is grinning devilishly and Tommy feels like he'll regret calling TFC “sir”, but something about the man just demands respect, and hell, Tommy's a guest here, to the server and to the- the zoo? False said?
False gestures past the campfire they're standing around to a slime and a man in a beanie
"Jevin and Hypno are over there, I think." She turns to Cleo. "Did Wels and Bdubs leave early to sleep?"
Cleo chuckles. "Take a wild guess."
False's head swivels around a bit more, like she's looking for someone she can't find.
"Where's Ren?"
Cleo laughs again, this time deeper and croakier.
"Joe is chasing him around the dog sanctuary because of that request for dog removal Cub put in."
"And Cub?"
"Watching."
All four of the hermits laugh, and Tommy feels just a little like he did when he was standing on top of the Welsmart, except he's here because False dragged him here, not because- well, he's in Hermitcraft because Phil and Wilbur and Techno and Tubbo dragged him here to visit, and that's not so different, is it?
Is it?