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“Come here, Dream!”
Techno is jolted out of his nether wart farming by a shout, whipping his head over to the source of it. Running along a narrow mountainside across a lava lake from Techno and a handful of other piglins is a masked man being chased by five others, doing some fancy maneuver involving building up under himself before dropping down behind the group, surprising them enough for two, the cat-looking one and the demon (he thinks it’s a demon anyway) hybrid to fall off into the lava below, screams echoing as they descended quickly. The distraction gave the masked man enough time to knock the others off without much of a struggle, exclaiming triumphantly when they hit the lava below.
Great. This again.
He smiles despite himself.
Techno doesn’t know exactly when Dream ーhe’s heard all of their names screamed enough to be able to put a name to all of their faces, but to be honest, he never bothered to remember the names of the five chasers (yeah, okay, call him a simp, but at least he’s not simping for the losers, alright?)ーand his little friends (and he knows they’re friends because they all walk through the nether once they’re done, cleaning up whatever mess they made, and surely Dream wouldn’t do that if he was actually in trouble, right?) started this weird game-thing, but he can clearly remember when Dream went from having one of his friends chasing him, to two, to three, to four, and then finally, recently, five. Every single time, without fail, Dream will walk over to Techno and some other piglins before showering Techno in gold.
Realistically, he knows that Dream and his friends probably don’t end up at the same place every time, and surely they’ve played games and traded with piglins that Techno didn’t know about, but he likes to pretend that Dream gives his gold to Techno and Techno only.
… Okay, he might be a bigger simp than previously thought.
“Well, well, well, if it isn’t my favorite piglin.” Techno looks up from where he was staring at the lava Dream’s friends had previously fallen into, not even noticing he hadn’t moved his eyes since he started spacing out, watching as Dream walked his way with a single gold ingot in one of his hands. Techno would love to say that his eyes latched onto the gold immediately, as his piglin instances probably would’ve liked, but all his attention is drawn to Dream’s hair and how similar the hue of it was to the metal in Dream’s hand. When the masked man’s words finally caught up to Techno, he realizes smugly that some other piglins have started making their way to Dream, but the aforementioned man’s attention seems to be solely on him.
Techno never questioned how Dream managed to locate him every single time he came through these parts, since he doesn’t look that different from the rest of the piglin brutes around him, but he can’t say he’s mad about it. Ever since that first day he saw Dream, with only the brunette one chasing him, the blond seems to always seek him out. Techno doesn’t know why Dream chose him, whether it was because of the items that he gave him, or because he didn’t try killing the blond immediately upon sight (how have none of the other piglins figured out that killing people doesn’t equal getting gold?), but, as stated before, he can’t say he’s mad about it.
Over the many times Dream has interacted with Techno, the two of them have formed a sort of base-level agreement with each other. Dream will give Techno every last piece of gold he has in his possession, Techno will sort through his chest of offerings, picking a few strange, but not useless, items to give to Dream, just to see him fidget around nervously, until finally giving Dream more-than-enough ender pearls, never ignoring the excited expression that crosses the blond’s face, keeping whatever leftover gold he has. Techno also ignores Dream breaking pieces of gold in netherrack near him, attempting to shield the view of him from other, less civilized piglins who are possessive over some specks of gold in the floor (seriously, if they love it that much, they can get their own pickaxe and dig it up themselves).
They have a routine, and Techno wouldn’t break it even if someone was ruining his nether wart farm.
“What’re we looking at today? Obsidian, spectral arrows, maybe some potions? I’ll take anything you got, Techie.” … Okay, so maybe Techno told Dream his name by planting his nether wart in a specific pattern, but it was only because he wanted the blond to stop calling him porky (and that is the only reason, he has no alternative motives).
Techno grunted in response, accepting a handful of gold ingots before searching through his chest. He handed Dream the three items the blond asked about earlier, ignoring the pleased smile on the blond’s face, before inspecting the rest of the chest's contents. Should he give him a fire charge or some iron nuggets he had found by some explorers who didn’t bother to clean up whatever items they left in a rush to get away from a ghast overhead? In the end, he decided on both, only putting one gold ingot in his chest in favor of the two items, because he knows that in the end, he’ll get all the gold anyway (and it was not because Dream looked overjoyed at both items).
Techno’s ears flicked as he was debating what to give Dream next, catching the faint sound of people traversing through netherrack, five separate pairs of footsteps making Techno’s current choice, between ender pearls and nether quartz, for him. With a small huff of breath, he grabbed the thirty ender pearls he had (look, he saved some enderman named Ranboob or something once and now the guy feels like he needs to give Techno a handful of ender pearls every day) before thrusting them into Dream’s waiting hands.
“Whaー really?” Dream glanced down at the items in his hands before looking back up at Techno, a stupidly-bright smile on his face that would trample any ideas of taking the trade back if Techno had them. In response, he nodded, his eyes flicking briefly over to where he heard the footsteps before, seeing a glimpse of the top of someone’s head before shifting his attention back to Dream, catching the bright grin there. Dream seems to have noticed his hint, glancing in the same direction before cursing under his breath at the sight of his friends walking close to where Techno first saw them today. Luckily, they don’t seem to have noticed where Dream is yet (whichー how, because Dream goes to the same place literally every time), so the blond is still in the clear. Nevertheless, he looks back to Techno, putting his ender pearls away in his little backpack before smiling brightly at the piglin, bringing a hand up to shyly wave. “Bye, Tech, ‘til next time!” With that, Dream runs off in the opposite direction of the chasers, and Techno watches him go until he can’t see any form of him anymore.
When he gives up on trying to find any glimpse of lime green in the endless landscape of red, intent on continuing his nether wart farm, he’s greeted by a face directly in front of him. If he were a lesser piglin, not a brute built for pure strength, he would’ve jumped at the sudden introduction. Techno narrowed his eyes at the person so close to him, recognizing them to be one of Dream’s friends, the one with the black hair and white headband. The goggled one was behind him, fiddling with some gold in his hands, while the other three were nowhere in sight, presumably finding more gold.
When Dream’s friend noticed that Techno was finally paying attention to him, he grabbed a gold ingot from the brunette, ignoring the indignant “hey!” before swinging the metal in front of Techno’s face like he was some kind of dying animal desperate for food. “You want some gold? I know you like it.” The black-haired man now spoke to him as if he were a child, his voice sing-songy like Techno doesn’t know what he’s saying, drawing out the last word of his sentence to further the affect. Whatever the man was expecting from the piglin, whether it be a nod, or an attempt to get the ingot from him, or Techno dropping to his knees to beg for the metal, he huffed when he didn’t get it.
“Why are you speaking to it like that?” The brunette behind him spoke, looking up at the black haired man with a confused expression on his face.
“What, you think it’s gonna understand me any other way? This is the only idea I got, dude.” The man looked back towards Techno, holding the gold up before his face again, seriously, does this guy not think Techno knows what he’s here for? “I,” he interrupted his sentence, gesturing to himself, “need ender pearls.” He drew a circle in the air in front of him with the hand that wasn’t holding the ingot, his eyes wide as he nodded slightly, his words slow, as if trying to get Techno to understand, he may not be a human, but he’s not an idiot.
Deciding to humor the two men a bit, he took the offered gold, ignoring the black haired man’s fist pump, searching through his chest for whatever he could find. He picked out the worst item he saw, a handful of string, before handing it over to the waiting, not patiently, may he add, man. The crestfallen expression on the recipient’s face would’ve caused him to snort if he was alone, but he couldn’t ruin his act just like that.
A determined expression suddenly replaced the sullen one, the man grabbing another ingot from the brunette before thrusting it towards Techno, waiting expectantly as the piglin searched through his chest again. He pulled out a single piece of leather, handing it over and placing the gold in its rightful place. An annoyed expression broke out on the black haired man’s face before he took a deep breath, schooling his expression before taking another gold ingot from the brunette. This time, he chose three pieces of soul sand, handing them over without a second thought.
He took pride in the angry expression on the man’s face, his dark eyes looking down at the soul sand in his hands before back up at Techno, glaring at him as if the fate of his received items doesn’t lay in the piglin’s hands. He thrust the soul sand into the brunette’s arms, taking another ingot before giving it to Techno. In return, the piglin gave him three nether bricks, smiling mentally at the slightly-angier expression. He grabbed another ingot, practically shoving it at Techno, who noticed that the brunette was only holding one more ingot.
Might as well make these last two count.
He took six pieces of gravel out of his chestーsix! he’s practically giving stuff away at this pointーand handed them to the man, whose furious expression only grew more angry. With the last ingot, he gave the black haired man two pieces of crying obsidian in return, snorting slightly in amusement as the man threw the crying obsidian over the edge into the lava lake, ignoring the brunette’s stuttering behind him. He sent one last glare at Techno before grabbing the brunette, who just looked confused and shocked, and rushing away from the piglin, in a different direction than Dream went. Perfect.
Techno could hear the black haired man complaining about how “that piglin is useless!” and “how do we not have more gold?” as he walked away, causing a huff of amusement to leave Techno. He could care less about what Dream’s loser friends had to say, turning back to his chest to inspect all the gold he received in total. His thumb rubbed over one of Dream’s gold ingotsーwhich he knew was Dream’s, since it wasn’t dirty and didn’t look chipped in placesーas he let a small smile spread across his face.
‘Til next time.