Chapter Text
When you join the server, L’Manburg is in the process of reconstruction. A mixed group of server allies meet you at spawn, excitedly entreating you to join the Badlands or JackManifold Land or whatever other small nations have declared independence.
Jack Manifold shoves Bad in the upper arm, who sneers as Jack proceeds to throw a long arm over the darker being’s shoulders with a crooked smile, “Oi, don’t you want to join the best land of ‘em all? JackManifoldLand?”
“I don’t want to make any promises. I’m not sure yet where I’m gonna live. Maybe I won’t even join anybody, huh?”
Bad takes his chance to offer you a spot amid the Badlands again, despite everything you had just told Jack. He boasts of his and Skeppy’s mansion, the freedom of the Badlands, but then of course that gets Jack Manifold going again, the two of them bickering incessantly, and you meet Nikki’s eyes as you smother an amused laugh at their expense.
The L’Manburgians are the last to show up, all but tripping over themselves as they jump-sprint their way to spawn. Tubbo jumps up and down when he makes it to the disjointed wood-dirt walls, Big Q laughing over his shoulder, Ranboo waving shyly from behind them, and you smile and know immediately that you’re going to join this ragtag group of teenage revolutionaries no matter what you may have told Jack Manifold.
“I’m Tubbo, President of L’Manburg,” He looks so proud, “Let me give you a tour of the server.”
“Okay,” You say, and follow his lead. Jack Manifold pushes up front with Tubbo, but it’s evident the whole time that Tubbo has the best grasp on the builds and layout of the server, and he falls back behind you to make disgruntled British noises at Quackity.
“What’s with the crafting tables?” You ask, pointing at the floor as they lead you through the Community House. You watch as they collectively stammer. A blush reddens even the dark, Enderman half of Ranboo’s face.
Tubbo frowns, “Uh, it’s an adult joke. You probably don’t want to know.”
“Ah, got it.”
They lead you down the prime path, all of them jumping and laughing around you, pointing proudly at various given structures.
“That’s Hannah’s house over there! And Punz’s base. Oh, and here’s Purpled’s UFO.”
You look up in awe at the impressive build, make all the appropriate noises of wonder as Tubbo nods and leads you further down the prime path.
“What’s that?” You ask, pointing at a zig-zagged, cobblestone monstrosity in the sky.
Tubbo snorts, “Reverse coaster.”
You don’t ask any further questions. You can already tell they probably wouldn’t breed satisfying answers.
They lead you into Church prime, and you all take turns rapidly ringing the Prime Bell, laughing uproariously as Quackity spits out Spanish curses and hits it faster than anybody else.
L’Manburg is the last stop on the tour. Tubbo’s grinning proudly as soon as the ragtag group breaches the bridge on the other side of Tommy and Karl’s houses, “And this is L’Manburg!” He tells you, jumping excitedly, “This is where I live! We’re in the process of rebuilding right now, we had a bit of a revolution, but it’s gonna be awesome, I have tons of plans. Wanna come see?”
You laugh, gladly indulging the teen President and letting him pull you towards his country.
“This is the Camarvan. It’s where L’Manburg was first created, where it all started. It’s a really important building.” You look at it for a moment, curious and confused. To you, it just looks like a big, gray bus, but Tubbo’s eyes sparkle with pride, and you can tell it’s so, so much more. Tubbo grabs your wrist and pulls you forward without waiting for you to announce your reverence for the nondescript van. He leads you over a large Spruce structure, the hollow underside echoing each of your footsteps. You peer over the edge and find a large crater under your feet.
“Woah,” You breathe, taking it all in.
“We’re making sure that we don’t completely rebuild over the TNT holes,” He tells you as he stands next to you, looking down at the remnants of his country, “We don’t want to forget our history, so we’re rebuilding over our past.”
It’s a beautiful sentiment.
You stand in silence together above the gaping hole for a moment, pensive. Behind you, Ranboo’s ender particles flicker in the tense air like a violet hand hesitating to reach out. Eventually, Tubbo shakes his head and backs away from the edge, talking fast again, “Anyway, uh, this is L’Manburg,” He gestures at the wool balloons hovering in the sky, the matching wooden houses lined up on the opposite side of the paneling, “Like I said, we’re in the process of rebuilding, but you’re welcome to join us if you want.”
Your eyes flash guiltily towards Jack Manifold who’s busy defending his honor as Quackity swears incoherently at him, and you smile at Tubbo, “I’d love to build a house in L’Manburg.”
Tubbo immediately starts bouncing on the balls of his feet, excited as he starts rambling with ideas, “There’s space right next to Ranboo!”
Ranboo smiles at you, looking like a shy, little kid greeting you despite his towering height, “I can help you out if you want,” He offers, and you return his smile. You have a feeling L’Manburg was the right choice.
True to his word, Ranboo helps you in the upcoming days to build your house. His unfathomable height comes in handy reaching things outside of your two-block reach. He puts up a shelf, offers you his spare Spruce planks, helps to plant the red and yellow flowers in your upstairs window sill, and anything else you ask of him. At the end of the day, you ply him with cake and bread and insist on giving him the one golden apple you’d manage to collect since joining the server. He tries to refuse it- it’s your only one, and he doesn’t even need it- but you insist on repaying him somehow for his help.
As the sun sets, the two of you gather on your new front porch and overlook L’Manburg together. You can just make out Tommy and Tubbo silhouetted against the setting sun, their magnified shadow playing against the side of the Camarvan like a large scale shadow puppet as they laugh and throw dirt at each other, doing whatever best friends do, jumping and chatting about the things President teenagers and their war-torn best friends talk about at dusk. You watch Tubbo laugh at something Tommy says, and you’re glad he has a best friend like that. You tamp down on any sort of burgeoning jealousy that blooms in your stomach at the sight of it, and you pull a chunk off the loaf of bread you and Ranboo are sharing.
“Do you like living in L’Manburg?” You ask suddenly. It startles Ranboo. A crumb falls down his chest, tumbling through the small space between the slats and down into the flooding crater your house is built on top of. He scrunches his nose thoughtfully.
“I’ve never had a home before,” Ranboo says honestly, his voice as low as the mosquitoes that swarm beneath the wooden platform that New L’Manburg is built on, “So I don’t really have any point of reference, I guess, but uh, it’s pretty awesome,” His eyes pointedly dart over to where Tubbo and Tommy roughhouse around the Camarvan.
You know what he means. You don’t say anything else.
There’s something to be said about the inherent camaraderie in L’Manburg. You and Ranboo may be strangers now, but you won’t be forever. Ranboo’s barely been on the server longer than you, a mere millisecond in the grand scheme of things, and he’s already acquired a reputation as The Minutes Man, never far behind Tubbo, drowning in inks and quills and half-filled notebooks.
“Maybe Tubbo can get you a job too,” Ranboo offers hopefully. You pass the loaf of bread back to him. As badly as you want to, you can’t imagine how you fit into this strange group. But Ranboo’s right, Tubbo can probably help you.
“Yeah,” You agree, chewing thoughtfully, “That’d be nice.”
Together, you watch the sun set over two best friends in the distance.
Ranboo is good to his word once again, and he brings you up in the next cabinet meeting. According to Ranboo, Tubbo’s face lit up when he mentioned you wanted to help out more.
“There aren’t any open cabinet positions currently,” Tubbo tells you later, lingering in your front door. Behind him, Ranboo politely accepts some Blue from Ghostbur, “But you can help out with me and Ranboo rebuilding everything. Would you be cool with that? Ooh- you can be the Official Construction Manager!”
You laugh, “Sure. That sounds awesome, Tubbo. Thanks for finding a place for me.”
Tubbo beams, “Of course, y/n! If you need any-“
“Tubbo!” Ghostbur suddenly interrupts the President from the far end of the platform “Have you met Friend!”
Tubbo nods animatedly at the Ghost, cupping his hands around his mouth, “You introduced me yesterday, Ghostbur!”
“Oh! Cool!” Ghostbur shouts back, then promptly turns back to Ranboo, shooting several pieces of Blue at him that Ranboo struggles to catch with his lanky, uncoordinated arms. You and Tubbo watch on with stifled laughs.
“What exactly, uh, happened to Ghostbur?” You muster up the courage to ask. Tubbo’s face grows serious in an instant, more serious than you had ever thought possible from the cheerful kid, and you start to backpedal immediately, “Sorry, that was probably intrusive. He’s a ghost, it’s probably personal. I don’t know what I was thinking. You really don’t have to tell me, I-“
“No, you should know,” Tubbo says, with surprising conviction. There’s a small L’Manburg flag pinned to his lapel, and Tubbo reaches up with his opposite hand to fidget with it, “It’s important to L’Manburg’s history, so you should know if you’re going to be a citizen.”
You wait patiently for him to find his words.
“When Ghostbur was alive, he went by Wilbur. He was the founder of L’Manburg and our first leader,” With a grave expression, Tubbo explains L’Manburg’s complicated history to you. He leans against one of the flower beds propped up on your front porch, looking far off beyond the borders of L’Manburg and up into the sun.
He tells you about L’Manburg’s first stabs at Independence, the initial battles centered around the Camarvan. He tells you of Eret’s betrayal and all the threats Tommy and Wilbur were given. He recounts with a sad face how hard it had been to watch Tommy throw himself into losing battles, but he also remembers all the important strides towards independence, and the proud feeling of seeing Wilbur and Tommy stride up to the microphone during the first election. His face falls when he talks about Schlatt, and as he remembers Pogtopia and Technoblade his face gets all scrunched up and conflicted.
“When Schlatt had had the heart attack, we thought we’d finally won,” Tubbo tells you as the sun shifts from a bright yellow to a dusk-colored orange, “But we hadn’t anticipated Technoblade betraying us, or Wilbur-“ He clears his throat, “Or Wilbur blowing everything up.”
Your eyes grow big as he describes the onslaught of Withers, Technoblade, Dream, and the other L’Manburg enemies crashing toward the podium armed with Netherite gear and bared teeth. It had been a bloodbath, and at the end of it, hope seemingly lost- Wilbur set off the TNT.
Tubbo’s gaze shifts toward the shadowed crater under your feet, and you think you get it. It’s a lot to take on, being the president of a nation whose previous leader you had trusted and admired only for them to manually explode their own land and labor. You can’t imagine doing it yourself. No wonder he’s so intent on preserving L’Manburg’s history like a shadow box in the ground.
“Can I ask-,” You start after several long moments of Tubbo staring off pensively. He startles back to you, nods briefly, “I know Ghostbur and Phil and Tommy, what happened to Technoblade?”
Tubbo shrugs, “Supposedly, he retired. We don’t go looking for him, and he doesn’t bother us. It’s a mutual thing. He’s- powerful. Really powerful. He’s probably one of the only people Dream is actually afraid of on the server.”
You raise an eyebrow. You’re familiar with Dream’s reputation. You wouldn’t have guessed he was afraid of anyone.
“Sounds like it’s for the best he’s gone then.”
“Yeah,” Tubbo agrees, half-distracted by some inlaid memory, “S’Good he’s gone.”
In the silence, you look out over L’Manburg. Ranboo had left in the middle of Tubbo’s dissertation, waved kindly at Ghostbur before turning and returning to his house next door, closing the door behind him. Ghostbur’s still outside, enjoying the way the Twilight breeze feels vaguely like goosebumps going through him. He walks Friend in random, non-concentric circles, completely oblivious that you’re watching him. You tilt your head and find that Tubbo is doing the same, his big eyes trained on Ghostbur’s faint smile as he kindly goads Friend to go down a small step. You don’t say anything. You’re starting to understand, this president hasn’t had it easy.
“Good night, Tubbo,” You say eventually, as Ghostbur gets smaller against the backdrop of L’Manburg, lingering obliviously on the far end of the city. You reach your hand up to the handle on your front door, and you try on a small smile, “Thank you for telling me everything. I’m sure that was hard.”
Tubbo shrugs, refusing to quite meet your eyes, “It was, but it’s fine. It’s important to talk about that stuff.”
“Good night, Tubbo. Get some rest.”
“Night,” He says, nodding, and he jumps down your front steps as you enter your own house and lock the door behind you. You meander your way upstairs, the house dark, and you look out the window at the top of the steps. From there, you can see Tubbo. He’s balancing on the railings around the L’Manburg platforms like gym beams, arms out to steady himself. He jumps from one to another. It occurs to you that he’s never talked about a house of his own. He makes his way towards the docks and does the same balancing act there. He’s not tired. Eventually, you watch him return to the main square in L’Manburg, pull some wood planks out of his inventory, and get to work. It’s then that you finally remove yourself from the window, and go to bed.
You’re busy in the days that follow.
Tubbo greets you with a half-smile and a bundle of wooden planks hauled under his arm every day, and he tells you what he wants to get done for the day. Most days, Ranboo joins soon after even though it’s not in his job description. The three of you will spend the whole day in the hot sun, joking around and discussing build techniques. Tubbo describes his old house to you, now a burnt memorial by the Community House, and he animatedly discusses his most and least favorite logs, describes in close detail the schematics of a resource farm he wants to hatch nearby once L’Manburg is reconstructed. You hadn’t known he was such a talented builder.
The work is hard, but fulfilling, and usually a myriad of characters will stop by looking for Tubbo or Ranboo or even once or twice to welcome you to the server. When Quackity comes by, grave-faced, and says it’s L’Manburg business, Tubbo glances over at you.
“Uh, let’s take this to the Camarvan. Y/n, you’ll be good here on your own for a bit while I handle this?”
“Of course, Mr President,” You say, and you push in a particularly finicky wood plank with a pop just to prove your point.
Tubbo’s rambly and fast when he turns back to Quackity, “Tell me what happened.”
The two of them take off towards the Camarvan. Ranboo scampers after them. You don’t hear what they’re talking about, but you swear you catch the word ‘butcher’.
By the end of the week, you’re bone-tired. You’re sore, but it’s the satisfying kind of soreness only developed from good, manual labor.
“Take a day off,” Tubbo says with a smile when you find him with his feet hanging off the dock early one morning, “You deserve it.”
You agree, and tell him he deserves one too, to which he laughs drily, disbelievingly.