Work Text:
Technoblade treks through the forest, hacking away at the greenery before him with a machete already caked in dried blood. His companions—big-headed nobodies compared to him—can’t seem to stop talking. They stick close to his heels and boast about their achievements he could surely triple with his own.
Techno tries to block out the noise but it’s useless.
He whirls on the group, pinning each of them with a hard stare, red eyes like lasers. They go quiet immediately, jaws snapping shut with resounding clicks.
“Shut up.”
His tone allows no room to argument, cold and harsh. They won’t dare defy him, especially not with his size and skill level. He observes the way they cower, pressed under his metaphorical shoe.
He’s powerful.
And that makes him feel a bit sick.
With that, they continue on in silence. It’s nice. Techno is able to focus for the first time since being raised on a metal platform into the arena. He can almost pretend that he’s wandering through the forest by his childhood home, playing in the dirt as Wilbur swings from tree to tree.
The reminder of where he truly is comes in the form of otherworldly greens and blues and browns that cast a glow over everything they touch, clearly artificial. An arena. He’s walking through an arena. He’s supposed to kill everyone else and make it out alive, alone.
Arena. An arena. A death trap. This is supposed to be a game.
Techno can admit to himself in his own head that he doesn’t really want to be here.
He wants to be a kid again. He wants to cause chaos with his older brother and their friends around District Two. He misses it.
Things were better then. Simpler. Less violent. Sure, they still had to watch the games, but that was during a time when it didn’t feel… real.
It’s real now.
Death trap.
After a couple more hours of travel, the group finds a place to stay for the night and sets up camp. Techno offers to take first watch and everyone else readily agrees, clambering into their sleeping bags with the hope of catching an hour or two of rest.
They’re asleep within a matter of minutes. Techno could kill them all now—they’re defenseless—if he wanted to.
Instead, Techno ties up his long, matted pink hair at the back of his head with a stretch of torn cloth and a grimace as he makes himself comfortable, leaning against a tree, machete in hand. He’ll definitely be indulging in a long, hot shower after he wins this thing.
For now, he gets to work on scraping the dried blood off his hands.
He must have drifted off because he happens to startle awake when he hears quiet rustling from somewhere above. At first, Techno brushes it off as some small forest animal scurrying along, but the sounds continue, getting progressively louder as they draw near.
Techno swaps his machete for a trident that used to belong to the girl from Four.
Sitting still and silent, he listens and waits for the potential attacker to reveal themselves, careful not to move so he doesn’t scare them away.
Thump. Thump.
A mere few meters away, he hears the sound of two feet hitting the ground hard as if this mystery person had fallen from the sky.
Techno continues to wait.
He’s still leaning against the tree, so his back is to their campsite, but he can decipher where the person is based on sound—there’s the sound of a zipper being undone by the area he knows they threw down the bags holding their food in. A thief, then?
Techno slowly lifts himself from the ground, quiet as a mouse, and turns to see a fluffy-haired blonde kid—the boy looks young. This kill might break him a little, Techno thinks—holding a stolen pack of beef jerky between his teeth as he rummages around in their food storage.
A stealthy approach is definitely the best way to go in this situation, as the boy has no idea he’s been caught, and if Techno can manage to make this as clean and painless as possible, then maybe—
Of course, as he’s stuck in his thoughts, a stick on the ground goes unnoticed by The Great Technoblade (shameful, really) and he steps on it. The resounding crack that breaks the silence alerts the kid to his presence.
Bright blue eyes meet his own red, wide with shock, and they stare at each other at a stand-still for at least a whole thirty seconds before Blondie takes off running.
“Hey!” Techno shouts, startling everyone else in the group awake. They sit up groggily to ask what’s going on, but Techno’s already sprinting after the kid who thought he could steal from them.
“Fuck off!” Blondie screams back, darting between the trees with elaborate spins and twists in an attempt to lose Techno who’s still hot on his tail, gaining by the second.
Then this boy latches onto a tree and scales it like his life depends on it (and it kind of does) like a- like a raccoon, or something. Techno thinks he looks like a fucking raccoon. The stealing only adds to the mental image.
Blondie is still shrieking obscenities at Techno as he climbs with practiced ease—Techno is quite frankly amazed, and he stops to stare, awestruck.
“Ha, bitch! Bet you didn’t expect that one—oh, shit!” The boy screams and ducks to the side when Techno lobs a rock at him. It whizzes past his head. Techno curses quietly to himself and bends to pick up another.
He would throw the trident, but it’d probably just get stuck in the wood of the tree, and Techno isn’t willing to sacrifice the weapon.
“Hey, hey, hey! Wait a minute,” Blondie pleads. “No throwing shit, big man! That ain’t fair!”
Techno narrows his eyes. “You think anythin’ about this is fair?”
Blondie seems to think about it for a moment before grimacing. “No, but still?”
Techno wrinkles his nose before whipping another rock at the boy.
“Fuckin’ hell!” Blondie cries out, narrowly avoiding the projectile with a quick swerve to the right. “You want a taste of your own medicine, big man? I’ll give it to ya.” He grumbles as he breaks a small branch the size of a twig off the side of his tree.
When he throws it, it falls pathetically to the ground, fluttering in the air.
“Cringe.” Techno mutters.
The rest of the career pack’s shouts can be heard from further in the forest and Techno is jolted back into reality. He’s gotta kill this kid. Shit.
Blondie’s eyes widen with fear as he too realises the group is drawing near and visibly begins to search for an escape route.
“Hold on now,” Techno says just as Blondie prepares himself to jump. “Don’t run! I promise to make your inevitable death painless!”
“You’re a fuckin’ psycho.” The boy spits back before quite literally leaping away, safely landing on another sturdy branch in a different tree.
Techno’s jaw goes slack. This kid is a literal raccoon, confirmed. It's not a joke anymore.
Blondie looks back one last time, just as the rest of the Career Pack comes to stand by Techno’s side. They scream for blood at the boy above.
Techno’s heart tugs on instinct at the still terrified, but giddy grin that appears on Blondie’s face. He looks so much like Wilbur.
And he has the audacity to flip them off before disappearing into the thicket.
Kinda acts like Wilbur, too.