Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dream takes a deep breath in and out as he stares up into the night sky in one of the prison's watchtowers.

A shout from below caught his attention. Glancing down, he finds one of his few charges looking up at him. Tommy waves his arms around before cupping his hands around his mouth to shout again, but Dream stops him by lazily waving his hand at him before making his way down using the rope that hung down the side of the tower.

Tommy stood where he is as the man he has come to see as a brother approaches him in his Nightmare armor set.

"You need something?"

"No, it's just Wilbur bitching again," the teen breathes out with a sigh. Dream lets out a sigh of his own, nodding at Tommy to continue.

"He's been spouting on about wanting to prove that he's useful to you or some shit like that. Tubbo is honestly this close to shoving him in a cell right about now."

His index finger and thumb are touching. "...so Tubbo already shoved him in a cell."

"Yup," Tommy pops the 'p'. "He was getting annoying."

Dream lifts his mask to rub a hand down his face. It was entertaining in the first couple of loops, manipulating Wilbur into doing whatever they wanted. Tommy had the most fun of them all as he made the founder of L'Manberg do whatever he wanted while also pissing him off as he bragged about how his hero trusted him more than Wilbur could ever hope to achieve.

Then the next dozen loops were just Dream experimenting to see how far he can push Wilbur's view of him. Somewhere in their countless times looping, again and again, he gave up pretending to be different people and revealed at some points in different settings that he and Exdee are, in fact, the same person. Dream admits that it is nice being properly worshipped as a god, even if that worshipper is a madman who believes that he’s been revived to fulfill the Admin’s purposes.

Now, they were somewhat running out of ideas on what to do with Wilbur. He was getting annoying rather than entertaining, and they can only repeat the same ideas for so long before it got boring.

Dream readjusts his mask and decides to go for a leisurely walk around the prison's rooftop, Tommy following beside him. "How's Manberg?"

"We got plans brewing up there, Big D. We ain't tellin' ya."

"Oh come on, Tommy. At least tell me how Tubbo is doing with his whole dictatorship going on."

Ah, yes, Tubbo. The day when he was to be executed at the festival, Dream managed to stop Techno from taking the shot as Tommy snuck his best friend out. That day was fun, especially hearing the confused and frantic cries of many as Tubbo ordered his allies and fellow loopers to fire away.

Then Tubbo became president with Tommy as his vice, and the first thing he did? Had Schlatt and Quackity exiled and chased out. Following in Schlatt's footsteps and using his brains, he forced the citizens of Manberg to wear tracking devices, which are the original ankle braces that are modified to electrocute its victim whenever it detected any attempts at removing it or via remote that Tubbo has on hand.

Afterward, Tubbo ordered Dream to leave Manberg, much to the surprise of everyone, that surprise only grew when Dream only nodded and left peacefully instead of starting another war or some other negative reaction. The time moving forward was relatively peaceful, with very few orders from Tubbo that were delivered by Tommy.

Some of those orders were to have Sam locked up in the Vault after hearing rumors of the creeper hybrid trying to remove the tracking devices. Next, Tubbo wanted Sam to be tortured until he agreed to the conditions that Dream was unable to read and was denied to know of. When the president grew impatient, he personally came to visit him and warned him that if he still refused to follow, he'd order Dream to kill him and revive him again and again until he finally broke.

Besides all of these orders and few visits, the current dictator of Manberg and his right-hand man have been tight-lipped about their plans with the nation.

“He’s been doing great, and that’s all you need to know.” Tommy looks at Dream with the biggest grin he has ever seen. It reminded him of Wilbur when he blew L’Manberg up. Dream voiced his thoughts, and he received an offended yell in return.

“Hey! I’m better than that crazy bastard!”

“Mentally, yeah, but everything else, not really. You need to work on your persuasion, Tommy. Maybe try learning under Schlatt?”

“How the fuck am I suppose to side with him if he’s gonna be pickin’ the bee boy?”

“Some of the loops start earlier, say around after the disc war. I’m sure you and Tubbo can come up with a plan to have Schlatt have you as part of his cabinet or something.” Dream can only shrug as he makes his way down a staircase and into the halls of Pandora’s Vault.

The two loopers continue to idly chat and plan their next loops as they hear the loud demands to be let out, followed by a mocking, much quieter voice that only enrages the first voice even more.

“And here I thought pissing Wilbur off is my thing,” Tommy says the moment they turned the corner and saw Tubbo standing in front of an occupied cell. Dream decides to stand back and let the two teens mess with the unstable man for a bit as Tommy walks up to Tubbo's side.

“Tommy! I swear if you don’t get me out of here I’ll-”

“You’ll what? Blow this place up? Your savior’s domain?”

Tubbo lets out a dramatic gasp as he puts a palm over his chest, eyes widening in feigned shock. Dream can only guess where he’s going with this act. Even though Wilbur is out of view, he can still see his eyes widening at the revelation of the prison that he’s being held in belonged to his hero, as Dream never publicly announced that Pandora’s Vault is his territory. Before Wilbur could utter a word, Tubbo gave him a glare. “Is that how you show your appreciation towards heroes, Wilbur? I knew you weren’t to be trusted after you destroyed Manberg. Just when Dream was starting to trust you too. He revived you, and now you're turning your back on him?” The president tsked at the man, eyeing him in disapproval.

Tommy lets out a scoff in an attempt to hide his amusement, following along with Tubbo’s overly dramatic display. “You’re just like Eret, you traitor. Just wait when Dream hears about this.”

Dream lets out a quiet chuckle as he sees Wilbur lunge at them, trying to reach for either of the teens through the netherite bars that held him inside as he screamed and cursed at the two in front of him.

Scrolling through his hotbar, he summoned the Warden’s Trident and held it firmly within his hand. He lightly slammed the trident against the floor, causing whatever rant Wilbur was spewing to pause and for Tommy and Tubbo to turn to face his direction.

“I was not informed beforehand that you would visit, President.” He steps closer, letting his boots click onto the obsidian floor. Tommy looks back at Wilbur to see him gripping the cell’s bars, eyes glaring harshly at Tommy, a silent warning to keep his mouth shut, a quiet promise of harm if he were to speak.

In earlier loops, maybe he would have taken a step back in fear and complied. Maybe he would have listened to the person he once considered as a brotherly figure like he usually did and kept his mouth shut.

But after centuries of having to live in the same world, though different in events, ended the same with them suffering, he had grown strong enough to simply shrug the threat off his shoulder.

It wasn’t fair that they get to die in pain or live in misery while everyone else in the server got some form of a happy ending. He and the loopers, who he has grown to see as family, have suffered enough. They’re going to get their happy endings, even if it means being the very villains that he once swore to never be.

Besides, from what he and Tubbo learned from Dream, he got his amazing skills of combat and evasion from his past tormentors, and he continues to learn from those who hurt him.

His mentors were his tormentors.

Tommy now knows how Wilbur works through observation and personal experience, and he knows how to get what he wants from him.

Plus, it gets boring without a bit of drama and theatrics going on every once in a while.

With a small and challenging smirk, he turns to Dream as Tubbo told him all about Wilbur’s threat he has made against his prison. Tommy scowls as he spoke of his distaste of such disloyalty and ungratefulness after being revived.

Dream can’t help but be reminded of his interactions with Schlatt and Wilbur at this very moment. The way Tubbo stood before him, the glower on Tommy's face, the hint of greed and madness in their respective eyes as they told convincing lies. He’s proud of how much they improved and learned through their pain and scars. He’s proud that he got to teach them something, like how they taught him the warm sense of belonging, to be part of a family.

The Vault’s warden turns to Wilbur, who pales and tenses as he feels his savior’s eyes scan him as if he could see into his very soul. “Is this true, Soot?”

Wilbur’s breath hitches as he stands, body straight and rigid. “No! I would never-”

“I am your faithful vassal, Dream. Why would I lie to you?” Tommy cuts him off, icy blue eyes staring deep into Wilbur’s dark and raging brown irises in challenge. Tubbo stares at the man in the cell with a blank expression, yet in his eyes are a strong hatred for him as the dictator watches the man's every move.

Dream cuts through the building tension between the three before him, "I’ll take care of him later. What’s your business here?”

Tubbo is the first to look away from their staredown with a scoff. “Quackity is suspected to be planning a revolution against Manberg. I want him gone.”

“I heard. I’ve already located where he is.”

“Wait, really? Since when?!” Tommy butts in as he quickly breaks eye contact with Wilbur to openly show his surprise.

“Since two days ago. Would you like to take this conversion elsewhere?”

“Lead the way, Dream.”

And lead the way he did as the three in power ignored the stammering words of the Brit as they fall into a comfortable silence, as if taking a relaxing stroll around a park rather than a walk through the halls of a torture house disguised as a secure and safe prison. Once out of earshot, Tommy breaks out into laughter. “Tubbo, did you see his face when Dream looked at him?!”

Tubbo tries to stay composed but ends up laughing along with him, “I did! Dream, we need to do that again!”

The man only huffs out his own amusement as he leads them into a hidden room under the prison where two other people have been waiting for them.

“Hello, World!” Charlie loudly greets while waving his arm up high in the air, sending small bits of green slime around the room. Next to him is Ranboo, who has a stack of books on either side of his space on the meeting room table. He looks up from the book he’s currently reading and nods at them with an innocent smile.

“What magical bullshit are you reading about now, Ranboo?” Tommy asks the moment he enters the room. Tubbo slides into the chair beside the hybrid and leans over to see what he’s reading and grins. “The next loops are going to be interesting if we can make these work.” Tubbo reports, eyes glued to the book in his platonic husband's hands.

“Hey! Cut with the mysterious bullshit and tell us!” Tommy shouts impatiently, though Dream can see the excitement in his eyes and in the way he practically vibrates in his seat.

“So we tried getting a desired ending by altering the server through the book,” Ranboo began. “And it failed,” Tommy grumbled.

“Right," Ranboo gives Tommy a mild glare for cutting him off, "so, Charlie and I have been experimenting with what we could do, and it’s safe to say that we can alter ourselves, the others, and the world setting to whatever we desire, although the changes will only take place in the next loop,” Ranboo finishes. Tubbo quirks an eyebrow in interest, “I trust you, Boo, but I’m gonna need to see some proof here.”

The enderman hybrid lifts a hand up and away from the books, then a fireball materializes in his hand, something the hybrid should not be capable of doing. A smirk forms on his lips at the surprised and excited reactions from his fellow loopers (except his assistant, Charlie, of course). “I decided to get rid of my memory issues as I want to remember the chaos that we created in the past, and I especially want to remember what discord we will be brewing in the future.”

Tommy and Tubbo cheers as Dream gave the hybrid an approving nod. Having taken off his mask, Ranboo can see just how proud Dream is of him, which in turn made pride bloom within the hybrid’s chest.

In another world, they could change the story and create a wide variety of endings, from a happy miracle to a tragic end.

In another world, they might have chosen to do harmless pranks or stunts to confuse the people they had seen as friends and family to cope with the loops.

In another world, they might have still tried to find the solution, or better yet, the cause as to why they were looping in the first place.

But this is not that world.

In this world, no matter how good or different their actions are, they are stuck between two endings: To either die a hero or live as a villain, both of which offer their own set of suffering while the non-loopers get their happy endings.

In this world, they grew infuriated and jealous as they watched the people around them be joyous in their temporary Eden while they are damned to suffer in this rewinding hell.

In this world, they have found a way to continue to entertain themselves in their repeating loops of villainy, now having some form of control over their stories.

As Dream leans back in his chair to watch them all share a wide array of ideas, sometimes pitching in with his own as Ranboo writes it all down across pages in the book they have grown to call the Storybook in future loops, he thinks that he should be concerned in witnessing these teens speak of torture as if it's a form of play fighting. Maybe he should be concerned that the idea of hurting or being hurt has been turned into another form of entertainment.

But with how long they’ve been looping, how boring it gets, and how technically they’re all centuries old by now, he doesn’t bring himself to care.

As for the non-loopers? They’ve all had their happy endings, and there’s no point in giving them more of said endings if they’re not going to remember them. It’s time for their happy endings.

With the meeting room table now littered with paper, all of which are ideas that they previously couldn’t explore, the only thing they all care about are the possibilities and stories that they can experience and play out on the stage.

Now, with newfound enthusiasm, they all wonder what the next loop is going to be.

“As fun as it is planning with you guys, I need to get back to Manberg.”

"Oh, you’re still not done with that?”

“Wait, Ranboo knows what’s going on in that nation?”

“Yup, you’re the only one in the dark here, Big D.”

“Don’t worry, World! You’ll love it!”

Chapter Text

“Charlie, when are we?”

“Looks like it’s right after the disc war, World!”

“That’s earlier than expected…”

“Probably because you removed that red egg that brainwashed everyone, Boo.”

“Yeah, yeah, can we just fuckin’ start already? I wanna see what we can do!”

When L’Manberg was first constructed, Dream never bothered the people nor was there ever a war, in fact, he helped create the nation by giving them supplies and offering the people assistance. Maybe it was because the founder of the growing nation had close contacts with the server’s Admin thanks to Tommy.

Although, unlike Dream, those affiliated with the Dream SMP, such as Sapnap and George, have expressed their distrust and hate towards the growing nation, especially towards Wilbur, Tommy, and Tubbo as they took note of how often Dream disappears from the Community House and how often Punz was hired to deliver letters that originated from the L’Manbergians.

Today is the day where they decided to follow Dream, growing suspicious as to why the nation’s founder needed the Admin’s attention almost every single day. What they found is confusing yet disturbing.

Wilbur is sitting behind Dream with his arms wrapped around the masked man’s torso. Dream seems to be leaning against Wilbur while he calmly reads through a book, unbothered by the brunette's movements into burying his nose into his neck and what looks to be taking in deep breaths. What makes it even weirder is that Dream’s mask is lifted up to reveal his lips, and he never wanted to show his face, especially to someone he barely met in less than a month.

Sapnap and George march out of the bush they were hiding in and reveal themselves to the two leaders, a fierce glare and a scowl present in their respective faces as they approached. “Wilbur, what the fuck?!” Sapnap exclaimes, pointing his sword at him.

Wilbur’s head snaps up to face the armed duo, giving them his own glare as he pulls Dream closer to his chest. Dream casually looks up at the two before sighing, gently closing the book and placing it on his lap. “Yeah, guys?”

“Dream! Why are you just letting him handle you like that?!” Sapnap exclaims once more. George lifts his bow, ready to fire away the moment he sees Wilbur try anything suspicious. “Is he threatening you? Is this why you’re helping L’Manberg?” The normally apathetic man worriedly asks.

“No, I got it all handled, George. Please leave us alone.”

“DREAM-”

“But Dream-”

Wilbur’s glare darkens, now breathing heavily as he practically squeezes Dream against his body. Instead of ignoring this, Dream turns to the man behind him and whispers something. Whatever it was, it caused the man to freeze, eyes widening before letting out a whine, his tight grip going relaxing. “You see? I have everything under control.”

George lowers his bow and arrow, confusion written all over his face. Sapnap just looks dumbfounded. “Wha- when did- what?”

Dream simply opens his book to the page where he left off and leans back against Wilbur, much to the Brit’s delight. “Don’t worry about it, Sapnap. Now leave us alone.”

The two men caught a very faint scent of strawberries and they immediately complied, leaving without any further complaints. Once they were both alone, Dream closes his book again and turns his body to face the man behind him once more.

“You’ve been very good, keeping silent through all that,” Dream praises with a sharp smile as he cups Wilbur’s face in his hands, causing him to blush a noticeable shade of pink at the undivided attention he is receiving.

“As promised, I’ll let you in my cottage.” Dream materializes a single strawberry in his hand from his hotbar and presses it against Wilbur’s lips, who eagerly opens his mouth, letting the man he had grown to obsess over to feed him.

“Good job, my faithful vassal.”

Tubbo’s shoes lightly tap against the tiled floor as he makes his way through the dark halls to get to Schlatt’s office. Not bothering to knock, he slowly opens the door. A bottle flies and hits the wall next to his head, shattering into pieces, and Tubbo’s soft smile disappears, lips pressed into a line as he stares at the drunk man at his desk with disappointment clear in his eyes.

“And here I thought we were improving, Schlatt.” Tubbo steps into the office and shuts the door, locking it behind him. “Do I have to get Dream involved again?” He stands on the other side of the desk, placing an apple and a bottle containing a brown substance on the smooth wood surface of the desktop, uncaring of the way Schlatt freezes at Tubbo’s gaze or the way his breath hitches at the mention of the server’s Admin.

“Do you want Dream involved? No, right?” Tubbo places his palms on top of the desk as he leans closer to really look at Schlatt in the eyes, to make him realize that he can’t hide or avoid this conversation. The sheep hybrid stares back, eyes wide as he jerkily shakes his head from side to side. “N-no.”

“Good ram,” Tubbo slides the bottle that he came with closer to the hybrid, who slowly and shakily grabs it by the neck. Tubbo’s gentle smile returns as he gave a single nod at the man before him, giving him permission to drink the bottle’s contents. Schlatt immediately brings the bottle to his mouth and gulps down large quantities of the substance at a time, as if he were a man dying of thirst. His entire body relaxes as the apple juice soothes his constricting throat with each swallow, finally able to breathe properly.

“Don’t think I’ve forgiven you for making a mess, Schlatt.” The sheep hybrid chokes as he stops drinking and lowers the bottle from his mouth, back to looking like a deer caught in headlights. Tubbo turns his back to the man, quietly making his way out. “Clean up after you’re done. If not.”

He gives Schlatt a cold look over his shoulder. “Don’t expect me to come back with more apples.”

Punz slowly paces around in his obsidian bedroom with an empty yet restless mind. He slowly turns to Sam, who barged into the room and drops a metal tray, causing the little tower of sandwiches to bounce and scatter on the floor. Sam grabs the door’s handle and harshly slams the door shut. Punz didn’t flinch once, instead, moving to pick up his meal of the day, uncaring of the state that they were in. With each bite, he can feel himself slip deeper into the state of apathy, yet at the same time, he feels relief as he tastes the familiar flavor of blackberries in the jam used to make the sandwiches.

Despite the comforting taste of blackberries, he still felt restless to some degree, preferring to have his superior here to pet him. He could get out and look for him, but after what happened, he chose to stay put, not wanting to disappoint Ranboo again and be left alone in this dark room with nothing but the voices in his head that haunt him every waking hour and every cold night.

When he’s done eating his meal, he goes back to bed and tries to fall asleep, the ticking of a nearby clock the only thing he hears as the voices finally quiet down for him to doze off.

While the mercenary goes into a dreamless sleep, Sam is attacking any and all mobs that he sees are too close to their house that’s hidden away in the forest of the Dream SMP territories. The creeper hybrid lets out a hiss in frustration as he swings his sword at a sheep, killing it and almost breaking a wood block in the process.

He yanks the weapon out of the tree and continues to search the area, menacingly glaring at anything and everything. After a heated argument of Sam wanting to go with Tommy to wherever it is he wants to go, the teen smashed a bottle of red liquid over his head, spilling the precious contents inside. He ordered Sam to punish himself by watching over Punz, making sure the house is clean, and to not take a single bite or drop from a pomegranate and its juices.

Sam, not wanting to displease his charge any more than he already did, listens and obediently did as he was told, although the more he went without a taste of the fruit, the more his blood boiled. All of this building anger spilled in the afternoon as he stood over a bruised yet quiet Punz. He didn’t realize his mistake until he heard the front door open.

“Sam! You don’t fucking listen, do you? I told you to hurt yourself, not Ranboo’s bitch!”

The rage that he previously vented was now replaced with anger that's aimed at himself as his heart sank down into the pit of his stomach upon hearing Tommy’s booming voice. With clenched fists, Sam follows Tommy to the training chambers down below the house.

“Tommy! At this rate, we might as well chain your guard up if he can’t follow simple instructions. He could have severely damaged my dog!”

“Oh shut the fuck up, Ranboo! You know how stupid Sam is. Just have Dream’s vassal dog sit him or something!”

For the rest of the day, it was just nothing but pain for Sam, his body aching and burning along with the self-hatred that’s accumulated over the hours. Still, even after he’s left on the ground with blood pouring all over his body, he clings onto Tommy’s leg for more.

He doesn’t deserve less for failing Tommy, after all.

“Techo is a lot harder to tame than I thought,” Tommy grumbles as he stands back at the cage that contains a raging piglin hybrid. Ranboo can only sigh at the sight of the warrior with pomegranate juice staining his mouth and hands.

“That or because you exposed too much of your scent and fed him more pomegranates than you should have,” Ranboo takes in a large volume of air, then releases his breath as a very faint purple mist at the rattling cage. The effects were instantaneous, calming the caged hybrid down, but now he’s just looking at the pair outside with an absent expression.

“Now he’s too calm!” Tommy loudly complains. Ranboo lets out another sigh, albeit one filled with frustration.

The pair continues to discuss what they can do to get Techno under their control while they wait for the other loopers to join them in Snowchester. Pandora’s Vault was never constructed with how early on in the timeline they're in, and they wanted a private area for them to freely experiment with their strange abilities, so Tubbo proposed that they recreate Snowchester in a snowy mountain and disguise the entrance as a mining cave with all sorts of twists, turns, and hidden pathways that only they knew how to navigate.

“Sam is a lot easier to control.”

“Maybe because he doesn’t have voices constantly screaming in his head?”

“Why didn’t we even get rid of that?”

“We did but it didn’t really make that much of a difference so we didn’t keep that change. And, the voices are a backup plan since Dream is part of everyone’s chat now.”

“Hello, Ranboo and Tommy!” The pair both turn to Charlie, seeing Dream and Tubbo with the slime creature. “Techno still not cooperating?” Dream steps to Ranboo’s side, Tubbo going to Tommy’s.

“Nope. Pig’s too stubborn,” Tommy rapidly taps his foot against the obsidian floor. Charlie hops up close to the cage, staring deep into the piglin hybrid’s red eyes before turning to the four loopers with an idea.

“Why don’t we try combining all of our fruits and berries into a singular potion and see what happens? Maybe it can overload him or something?”

“Or,” Dream lifts up his hand to get their attention, “We could just use the voices in his head to our advantage.”

“How so?” Ranboo’s eyes widen in interest. He was always fascinated with the voices, especially ways to get them to cooperate and accomplish his wants and desires.

“I can hear them. They’re very much affected by our scents. We can just have Techno be overwhelmed by the voices and have him act mindlessly to their demands, and their demands will be our demands.”

Silence fell onto the room as they let Dream’s proposal sink into their heads.

“Wait, you knew how to tame him!? Why didn’t you tell us before!” Tommy accusingly points at Dream, who simply raises both of his hands up in mock surrender. “I just wanted to see if we can do it without having to use the voices, or having to go through the usual ‘befriending’ route.”

“...he's got a point, Tommy.”

“Fuck off, Tubbo. Let’s just get this bitch on our side.”

When election day came, the participants were in their respective offices to get ready before walking up to the stage.

Or, at least, that’s what some of the participants are supposed to do.

“Wilbur, do not disappoint me.”

“Don’t mess this up, Schlatt.”

Dream and Tubbo stood by the door as they observed Wilbur and Schlatt’s interaction after being told by their respective superiors what their tasks are, which is to form a coalition.

In another room, right next to theirs, Tommy and Ranboo are getting their respective guard dogs, Sam and Punz, to behave a certain way before getting them in armor to watch over the crowd. Charlie, who expressed that he had little to no interest in “playing with puppets”, has been watching over everyone and reporting back if there’s anything worth noting.

When the time finally comes, Dream sits on a rooftop, away from the general public’s sight except for Wilbur’s, who would make quick and inconspicuous glances in his direction. Tubbo stands beside Schlatt, acting as his assistant when really he’s just keeping the sheep hybrid in line.

Tommy and Ranboo sit on opposite sides of the crowd to watch over Sam and Pun, who now stands guard at the sides of the stage.

The results are just as predicted.

Schlatt became president with Wilbur as his vice president. There were a wide variety of reactions when the agreed-upon coalition was revealed, but there weren’t any laws stating that what they were doing was illegal so they can’t really do anything about it other than just letting it happen. They already voted, the president and vice president have been decided, now they have to live with that.

Deep in the depths of Snowchester, the loopers and their “special guests" sat in an indoor bar, celebrating their plan’s succession and rewarding their obedient dolls.

“Good work, Schlatt. I guess you’re not so bad after all,” Tubbo praised the ram hybrid as he slid another bottle of apple juice across the counter. Schlatt catches it and immediately starts chugging it.

Dream has Wilbur tied onto a chair across from his table, feeding him chocolate-dipped strawberries as treats. “This has been a very interesting idea, Charlie,” He turns to the slime hybrid in the corner that’s been writing in a spare book of all the ideas they’ve come up with. When Wilbur notices Dream’s attention is away from him, he lets out a high-pitched whine, causing Dream to drop the strawberry he was holding back onto a bowl with other chocolate-dipped strawberries. “Wilbur, what did I say about being a attention-whore?”

Wilbur dips his head down in shame, taking deep breaths in and out to let Dream's strawberry scent into his lungs to better soothe and behave himself.

“I get you didn’t experience a lot of love, Dream, but why do your strawberries make needy bastards instead of clingy friends? I mean, just look at how lovesick he is!” Tommy complains, staring at Wilbur with disgust written all over his face.

“At least Wilbur doesn’t cause property damage,” Ranboo shoots back as he tightly wraps a bandage around Punz’s wrist. “Your guard dog is just too destructive!”

“Oh fuck you, Ranbitch, at least mine can provide the best protection!”

“Okay, everyone!" Charlie quickly cuts in while clapping his hands, "I have good news!” He announces as he closes the book he was writing in. “Techno’s finally tamed! Although I did have to mix a little more of my limes in with your fruits and berries to make it work.”

“What do your limes do again?” Tubbo asks from behind the bar’s counter.

“I can make people trust me more and be more open with suggestions. I just went with Dream’s idea and made him weak against his voices’ demands,” Charlie gives them all an innocent smile. “He’s ours now.”

“Fuck yeah, Charlie!” Tommy cheers, knocking down a few pomegranates off the table from accidentally kicking the table’s leg. Sam grumbles as he bends down to pick them back up again.

“Well done,” Ranboo says while applauding. Tubbo and Dream follow Ranboo in clapping, praising the slime hybrid who beams under the attention.

“Now that we have the Blade under control, can we send him to the Pit to fight Sam? I wanna see how well he can do!”

“We just got Techno under our influence, Tommy. Why not-”

“No, Dream. I’ve been waiting for this moment for ages so that I can have Sam get fucked up. He still hasn’t learned his lesson when it comes to dog sitting Punz.”

Chapter Text

“....Charlie?”

“Yes, Tommy?

“Where are the others?”

“Tubbo and Ranboo are in Snowchester, and Dream is in prison.”

“...Alright...And when are we?”

“This is months after Wilbur was revived.”

“Oh okay...Wait- OH FUCK- C’mon, Charlie, we gotta get ‘im out!”

Quackity was slain by Dream.

When busting into Pandora’s vault, they expected many things. Blood on the walls, Dream’s scarred body, missing limbs- just overall a gory scene as Quackity's intensity in torture can greatly vary. What they didn’t expect is for Dream to be standing over the disappearing body of Quackity with a netherite sword through the duck hybrid’s only good eye (or is he human? They’re not entirely sure what Quackity is in this loop as they didn’t go through this loop’s memories in their rush to get Dream out, not that it mattered anyway).

"Looks like he’s gonna be fully blind now when he respawns." Tommy thought, a smirk forming on his lips, "Good."

Dream turns to look behind him, seeing Tommy with an axe to Sam’s neck, Charlie operating the prison’s controls, and Tubbo and Ranboo waiting for the bridge to let them cross. He turns back to the items on the floor and decides to do that one idea that they’ve been wanting to do.

“Hey, Tommy!” Dream shouts from his cell, his voice hoarse from either lack of use, or overuse from all the screaming he might have done.

“Yeah?” Dream puts his thumb on his throat and slides it across. Tommy immediately understands the gesture and slits Sam’s throat open. And just because he's feeling petty, Tommy lets the warden fall hard onto the hot floor below, then presses a foot on his bleeding neck before Sam could roll over or cover it with his hands. “Now what, Big D?”

“Remember that idea of yours where I’m-” Dream makes several gestures towards his own cell, Quackity’s items on the ground, at Sam, then finally at Tommy. “You know?” He doesn’t explain further as he limps over to his chest, grabbing a couple of books before walking over to Quackity’s belongings to pick them up.

Tommy stays silent as he tries to understand of what the hell Dream was gesturing about. He watches Tubbo and Ranboo carefully guide Dream across the moving bridge. When they’ve finally crossed, that’s when he remembers. “Ooooh! Yeah! This is perfect!”

“What are you two talking about? Are we not in on this?” Tubbo asks as he and Ranboo kept Dream steady. “Don’t worry, Tubs. Just follow along and you’ll get it,” says Tommy, grinning as he takes a step back. “C’mon Dream, do it!”

Dream gives a single nod, unable to show his own grin due to his damaged mask still covering his face. He slowly goes over to Sam and stomps on his slit throat.

Awesamdude was slain by Dream.

“If we’re really gonna make this work, I’m gonna have to have that mask, Big D.”

“No problems there. You also have to use some shears or a sword to scar my face. Or maybe give me a couple more scars all over to really sell it.”

“Wait, what?!”

“Don’t worry, Ranboo, this is just part of the plan.”

“That doesn’t ease me, but if it has to happen, I won’t stop you.”

“That’s the fuckin’ spirit! Now hurry! We got a lot of shit to do!”

The death messages did not go unnoticed as most of the server’s inhabitants rush to the prison with weapons in hand, assuming the worst when it came to Dream.

What they find at the vault’s entrance is Tommy blocking it off with more obsidian while idly munching on baked potatoes. He blankly turns to the crowd, and his eyes darken as he straightens up and switches his food with a familiar axe that belongs to Sam. It was the Warden’s Hammer.

“Sorry, everyone. Can’t have you guys in while Tubbo and Ranboo are performing an exorcism or some shit like that.”

“Why do you have his mask!?” Sapnap loudly blurts out. Tommy raises a brow as he reaches for the white cracked porcelain mask on the side of his head. “Oh, this? This is just a failsafe if things go wrong.”

Fundy pushes forward, shouldering his way to the front while letting out quiet apologies as he goes. Once he got to the front, he gestures for Tommy to pause, “Wait, wait, wait, back up a minute. What did you say about an exorcism?”

“Tubbo, Ranboo, and I had been suspecting that Dream’s being possessed by some dreamon, and we were right.”

“And how do you know that you’re not being tricked?” Eret asked, skeptical of his statement.

“I’ve seen his face before, you fuck. Pretty damn sure he didn’t have red eyes or black veins around his eyes that made him look edgy and shit.” Tommy grumbles as he looks down at his beeping communicator. He then looks up and points his axe at Fundy and Sapnap. “You two, Tubbo wants you to help with the magic crap inside.” He lowers the axe and steps to the side.

Fundy and Sapnap share a look slowly before entering the narrow entranceway, Tommy stepping back to block and guard the only way in. “They’re probably gonna figure it out, so I might as well tell you guys and get it over with.”

“What do you mean, Tommy?” asks Puffy, “What happened in there?”

Tommy gets a book from his hotbar and waves it around for the crowd to see. “Oh boy, do I have the answers.” He shoves a book into Puffy’s arms, and then he tosses another book in Eret's way. “Get ready because what I’m about to tell you is a fuckin’ shitshow.” He then starts dumping out bloodstained tools and weapons from his inventory.

Sapnap and Fundy cautiously made their way through the prison’s portals to then be greeted by Tubbo with blue and red stains all over his hands, forearms, legs, and a bit on his face. The sheep hybrid’s expression is grim as he puts his communicator away to give the newcomers his attention.

“Hey, guys. I don’t know if the dreamon messed with your memories too, but we’re dreamon hun-”

“What do you mean ‘messed with your memories’? Tubbo, what’s going on?” Sapnap cuts him off as he steps forward. Fundy stares wide-eyed at Tubbo’s messy appearance, shaking as he smells the familiar scent of blood.

Blood that belonged to his ex-fiance.

“T-tubbo, why- you-”

The ram gives Fundy an apologetic look before turning around, signaling for the two to follow him, “I’ll explain while we walk to the main cell.”

And he did. He told them of their failed exorcist attempt that made the dreamon stronger. How the dreamon manipulated George to ruin Dream and Fundy’s wedding, how the dreamon puppeteered Dream and made him watch as the server he worked so hard for fell apart, how the dreamon managed to erase everyone’s memories of Tubbo trying to warn them of its existence as he made more problems that slowed down the ram's progress to stop it.

The reactions he got were expected, but still entertaining as he listened to Fundy choking on his own tears as he tries to stay silent and listen to the fabricated story that Tommy and Dream came up with. The corner’s of his mouth twitched upwards when he hears Sapnap growl as he tries to control his growing flames, increasingly losing his composure the more he went on about how the dreamon made Dream a prisoner in his own body before manipulating everyone to imprison his best friend, further aiding the dreamon into tormenting him.

Now as fun as it was hearing them in grief, the real kicker was hearing them reacting to what Sam and Quackity had done without the dreamon’s meddling. Tubbo somberly explains that Dream was already at the very edge of giving up, and with Sam and Quackity actively harming him, it solidified the dreamon’s hold into his soul, which led to their deaths.

“Sam is in a different cell, Quackity is most likely in Las Nevadas, and we restrained Dream in his cell,” Tubbo ever so quietly says as he deactivates the lava to let them see the end result of the “dreamon’s” work. Sapnap’s fists tremble as he grits his teeth, glaring harshly at the lava as it lowered oh so painfully slow. Fundy, too, shook but not in rage, rather in shock and fear as he tries and fails to clear his vision from his tears.

What’s inside the cell only made their grief worsen.

Fundy gagged as the smell of Dream’s blood grew stronger, Sapnap paling at the sight of blood covering the entire interior of the cell, and the scars, both old and new, decorating Dream’s body.

Sitting in the same cell as the possessed man, Ranboo is shakily writing runes and sigils with blue dye, presumably lapis lazuli, on the bloodied obsidian floor, glancing at an open book every now and then to check if his work is the same as the one instructed. He flinches away in fear as Dream lunges at him from his spot at the center of the magic circle, chains keeping him still as to not harm the enderman hybrid.

“I don’t know how much the dreamon messed with your memories, but what I do know is that you’re strong enough to resist its influence.” Sapnap and Fundy both turn to Tubbo, who hands them both a book each, “Which means that you’re potentially strong enough to get our Dream back.”

The ritual circle that’s been heavily customized by Tubbo beforehand had, of course, failed, much to Sapnap and Fundy’s frustrations.

Tubbo and Ranboo force them to leave as it completely sapped both their energy and magic reservoir, and they have warned that doing another attempt could potentially kill them and take a canon life.

After much convincing, Ranboo and Tubbo led the tired pair out of the prison. The first thing the loopers noticed is that the sun is setting. They’ve started this entire thing around midday.

The first thing the non-loopers noticed is the crowd that they came with, all in a state of anguish, with Puffy and Eret being in the worst state of them all.

Puffy kneeled onto the grass as she reads through a book with tears falling freely from her eyes. Eret seems to have paled into a ghostly shade of white as he shakily flips through the pages of his own book.

“Did you tell them?” Tubbo asks Tommy, who’s leaning against the obsidian barrier that blocks the prison’s entrance. He only gave a single nod, not taking his eyes off of the crowd.

“Did the ritual work?” Tommy tilts his head at his best friend, who grimly shook his head ‘no’. “We’ll try again once these two rest up and are better prepared.”

Tommy lets out a sigh as pushes himself off the wall. “Okay everyone, go back home. Tubbo, Ranboo, and I will take things from here-”

“What about Sam and Quackity?” Punz asks from his spot in the crowd. “We have Sam in one of the cells. Quackity is probably somewhere in Las Nevadas,” answers Tubbo as he guides Sapnap to Karl, Ranboo doing the same to Fundy towards Eret.

“We’ll be busy adding sigils and stuff around the prison to secure Dream and the dreamon inside. If you want Sam out, please do because we really need to focus on Dream.”

“We’ll take him to the Courthouse.” Ponk steps beside Punz, putting a hand on the mercenary’s shoulder and lightly squeezing it to calm his anger just a bit.

“Good. Follow us inside.”

Nightfall came and the prison’s entrance is sealed shut with three layers of obsidian as the loopers got to work in changing the entire interior of the prison. They could have taken more than one night, but with Charlie’s slime ability to duplicate himself, Dream going in Creative Mode, and having all the elder guardians killed, they managed to finish just when the clock strikes midnight.

“You ready, Dream?”

“As I’ll ever be, Ranboo.”

“Raise hell, Big D!”

“Good luck, World!”

“Do it, Tubbo.”

Tubbo nods, watching Dream lean back in his obsidian throne and close his eyes. He steps forward with a dagger, slitting Dream’s wrists and neck open. Tommy and Ranboo walk over with bottles to collect the flowing blood from the Admin's body. Dream’s non-corporeal form smirks at the sight before vanishing into thin air, transporting himself into the realm of dreams to welcome the server’s inhabitants into a nightmare to behold.

When morning came, the loopers, along with Quackity, Sam, and Wilbur were the only ones left awake.

To the others who are trapped in their sleep, they think that everything is going in the right direction. They think that they captured a blind Quackity and had him and Sam punished for their crimes. They believe that the exorcisms are working, that Dream is closer to being free from the dreamon’s hold.

They dreamt that they were finally fixing the server as the weeks rolled by, while in the real world, only a day passed.

When everything is done, Dream disguises himself to tell the people in his made-up world that it was time to wake up.

Regretnoblade.

oh god someone heal him-

There’s so much blood

should’ve done that favor sooner

Why is he screaming!? It hurts my ears!

He’s possessed, idiot, they’re trying to force it out!

Why is he bleeding more!?

Put the blood back!

JUST PUT HIM OUT OF HIS MISERY ALREA-

Techno winces as the loud sounds of the voices were suddenly replaced by an even louder sound of static. The white noise abruptly dies down to make way for a new wave of voices, these ones familiar yet unfamiliar at the same time.

Wake up, Technoblade.

This is a dream.

None of this is real.

You need to wake up.

There was no dreamon-

“Techno!” The pink-haired man’s attention snaps up to Tubbo, who remains crouched down by Dream’s side, trying to keep him still as the sheep hybrid struggles to draw more sigils on the possessed man’s arm. “I need you here!”

Techno hesitates as he listens to what the new voices have to say, finding their sudden change in demeanor strange and suspicious, but the strange voices were gone, now back to the loud and panicking ones that he has grown familiar with since the dreamon was revealed.

-LD HIM DOWN!

Techno move!

Stop the teletubby! He’s getting more ketchup everywhere!

the fUCK?!-

Not the time to joke around, dude

“TECHNO!” Tubbo screams again. Techno immediately jumps into action, putting his weight on Dream arm, letting Tubbo redraw the smudged symbols. The pinkette glances at the book that Tubbo left open, and his suspicions grew upon seeing the word “vessel” crossed out. 

Phil scoured the library with Karl and Ranboo in Kinoko Kingdom. The crow hybrid and library owner occasionally showed their books to Ranboo as he was the only one who truly knew what type of books were needed to help Dream.

Karl fully trusts Ranboo, blindly following his words of judgment as he zooms around his library. Phil couldn’t help but grow puzzled as he observes the books that were approved and declined by the ender hybrid.

The books that were declined are ones that hold knowledge of healing. He can understand the reason that the method was already used or that the method didn’t work, but the book informing them of different ways to purify a person’s body was somehow declined as well.

The books that were approved of were ones of power, ones of sacrifice, ones of exchange.

Phil very much wants to trust Ranboo, but the more they went through the library’s books, the more he grew skeptical. It certainly didn’t help that the words of his crows went from panicked cries to unsettling whispers as he walks past the windowsills that some of them are perched on.

Don’t trust him.

This is all a lie.

Everything is a dream.

Get out.

The danger is outside.

He regrets ignoring his building dread when he sees a message notifying the entire server.

Dream was killed by Tubbo using magic.

The inhabitants of the server all jolt awake at the same time with the sky in shades of red and orange. Many were confused as to how they got back into their beds while others immediately checked their communicators to find that same death message.

Quickly, they equipped their armor and weapons and rushed towards Pandora’s Vault.

They are greeted by Ranboo with an uncharacteristically wide smile on his face.

Some of the obsidian blocking the entrance has now turned into crying obsidian.

“We are grateful for what you’ve done. Now, Dream is free.” Ranboo bows to them, straightens back up, then stares at them with unblinking purple eyes, his smile growing wider.

Chapter Text

“HO-LY SHIT!”

“Ranboo! Look at you!”

“Everyone, can you hear me?”

“Dream! Where are you? You need to see Ranboo, Big Man!”

“I’m in an abandoned castle.”

“Where is that, Big D?”

“Look through this loop’s memories, if you still don’t know, Charlie should be able to guide you guys here.”

They have learned that ever since the discovery of the Storybook, tweaks and changes can be made to better cope with the boredom of looping over and over again.

They have also learned, later on, that the server is not sticking to the original world anymore. Sometimes they were hybrids, sometimes the life system is different, sometimes impossibilities are possible and vice versa, sometimes a roleswap occurs.

And in other times, they’re in an entirely different setting. They’re not complaining in the slightest because playing an edited version of the original can only be fun for so long until it isn’t (and yes they did try playing nice in said different settings. It just brings new experiences of pain and bad endings).

Although, despite all these alterations, there were things that rarely changed, and those rare changes either don’t make that much of an impact on their current loop life or are just adjusted versions of what it is to fit the current loop’s world rules.

Such as now.

Ranboo stares at his clawless, dark and pale hands- not black and white, dark and pale. Where the two different skin tones meet at the center of his face is not a clean line, but uneven splotches of the two crossing to the other. He is an actual human.

“Look at you, Ranboo! You look awesome! We look awesome!” Tubbo exclaims as he inspects their attires. They all seem to be wearing some kind of fancy royal-esque attire with the cloaks, baggy clothes, and the amount of jewelry that they're wearing. On the side of their heads are their own personalized masks that, according to this loop’s memories, grant them powers and abilities.

Tommy’s mask is themed as a red raccoon, Tubbo’s a yellow bee, and Ranboo’s is basically just his ender-hybrid self’s face with horns.

Ranboo is just cosplaying himself to gain access to his powers. Tommy couldn’t help but burst out laughing as he tries to wheeze out the thought to Tubbo while pointing and making other hand gestures at Ranboo’s way. The former hybrid glares at Tommy, but then gives a small smirk as he moves his mask to cover his face.

“Hey, Tommy,” the blonde looks up at the towering human with tears in his eyes from how hard he had been laughing. Blue eyes meet the purple eyes of Ranboo’s mask and suddenly, everything went dark, as if under the potion effect of blindness.

Tubbo watches Tommy straighten up in alarm as he quickly glances around the surrounding forest. “Haha, okay, uh, Ranboo, this is cool, you can stop now.”

Ranboo quickly walks up to Tommy with silent feet, abruptly picking the now shrieking teen up from behind as he wildly kicks the air and swings his arms in fright. Tubbo can clearly see now that Tommy’s eyes are purple as he's under Ranboo’s illusions.

Purple eyes turn back to blue, Tommy blinks as he looks around the forest once more before yelling at Ranboo in feigned rage. Tubbo and Ranboo just laughs at the blond’s antics.

They abruptly pause when they hear twigs snapping and leaves rustling. Ranboo drops Tommy, who, alongside Tubbo, moves his mask to cover his face. They didn’t have any weapons in hand, but at least they had their power-giving masks and centuries worth of experience messing with people.

The rustling and snapping drew closer until it suddenly ends at the very edge of their little campsite that the trio woke up in. They tense, ready to fight off whatever it was, but then immediately relaxes when Charlie pops up with his generic green mask with a “:D” expression on the side of his human head.

“Hello everyone!” Unlike Ranboo, who rarely changes in the loops, Charlie’s appearance fluctuates between flesh and slime, that’s how they were able to tell it was him as he steps out of the bushes. Unlike the fancy multi-layered outfits of the trio, Charlie is just wearing a white dress shirt, a dark green vest with matching pants, and black polished shoes.

“Sorry I arrived a little late. I had to hide from the royal guards that wanted to catch me while also leading them away from your campsite.” He steps out of the bushes, making no moves to tidy himself up.

“Wait, guards? Are we actual royalties?!” Tommy loudly questions in his excitement. Tubbo slaps a hand over his best friend’s mouth, puts a finger on his lips and goes “Shhh!”

“Answering Tommy’s question, yes, you are! I’ll get you guys to Dream while you sort through your current selves’ memories.” Charlie wears his mask over his face, his entire form turning green and slimy, the only thing left unchanged is the mask that he wears, now floating in his slime body. Charlie, in all of his slime form glory, expands and morphs into a large horse.

The trio of royalties looks up at Charlie in awe. Tommy is the first to break out of his state of wonder, pushing Tubbo out of the way while yelling “Dibs on sitting at the front!” as he rushes forward with the others close behind.

From what they gathered from sorting through their own heads and general discussion is that they are royalties from different kingdoms on the quest to find Dream, which led to them meeting and deciding to continue on their journey together.

Tommy is the youngest prince from the Antarctic Empire who grew jealous of Techno and Wilbur’s achievements. The jealousy then grew into hatred towards his family for treating him like an incapable child, thus limiting his freedom, which eventually led to him deciding to ditch the empire and find Dream for personal gain.

Tubbo is from Manberg whose father and kingdom’s dictator, Jonathan Schlatt, tasked him to track down and sway Dream to their side for better chances at defeating Tommy’s nation, with who they’re currently at war. Instead of following through, Tubbo planned to warn Dream and convince him to stay neutral throughout the war or to be peaceful.

Ranboo is a runaway prince from a faraway and powerful kingdom of Endlantis. The royal family has a tradition of having its majesties be personally crowned by Dream and have him be on good terms with the nation. Ranboo is the next in line to find Dream, but instead of taking him to the nation, he wants the masked god to bless him with the wish to be free as the kingdom was strict that made him feel more like a puppet rather than a prince.

Charlie is Dream’s eternal and omnipresent servant whose immortality is linked with the very mask he wears, the same mask that grants him his powers, and the same mask that was blessed to him by the god he serves.

Now as for Dream, from what they know and according to Charlie, is the only known semi-immortal god by choice. He chooses to die and be reincarnated as a new man in one of the many indestructible statues made in his interpreted god form (said interpreted god form varies from region to region).

In this world, magic is limited to enchantments and simple spells, but with Dream and his masks, people can go beyond that than what mortals are capable of doing, which is why he’s hunted down and highly sought after.

Weirdly enough, none of the trio’s memories explains why they have their masks in the first place, but apparently, this loop’s version of themselves was still asleep, which led to Charlie having enough time to track them down and give them their masks that Dream very quickly conjured up for them.

“Oooh boys, I have an idea!” Tommy yells as he punches the sky while leaning back in excitement, causing Tubbo to lean back against Ranboo, who’s gripping onto the back of Tommy’s cloak so as to not fall off of the highspeed galloping horse made of slime that is Charlie.

“Tom- Tommy! Tommy, stop leaning back! I’m going to fall!”

At noon, they arrive at a kingdom in ruins that has been overtaken by nature. Vines and plants grow on the floor and walls of the old streets and structures. The three princes look around in awe as Charlie trots over the foliage and to the front of the castle at the center of the lost kingdom.

“Hey, why’d we stop?” asks Tubbo once he noticed that Charlie is just standing in front of the giant old doors of the palace. “Dream said that you should try going to the central garden on your own as a way to experiment with your masks.”

“Yup, I did.”

The trio jumps at hearing Dream’s voice inside their heads, having it been hours since they last heard from him. “Dream! How are you doing that?” asks Ranboo as he carefully lowers himself down from Charlie’s back.

“The masks are essentially this world’s version of communicators. Pretty cool, right?”

“Hell yeah it’s cool!” Tommy yells out as he shifts the mask over to his face. The mask’s eyes glow an electric blue and Tommy can immediately feel the power flow through him along with the knowledge of what the mask grants him.

Unlike Ranboo, Tommy stands on Charlie’s back and takes a large leap off, rolls across the ground, then springs up to his full height. “Fuck yeah! This is gonna be fun! Race you inside!”

Tommy ignores Ranboo and Tubbo’s surprised calls as he scales the walls of the old castle, using cracks and thick vines to get to the top and over it. The duo that’s left behind quickly put their own masks on. As soon as their masks’ eyes glowed, Tubbo’s being a pastel shade of blue, they were off with their own method of entering.

Ranboo crouches down, dark wisps swirling around him as he builds energy then jumps, landing at the very top of the wall. Tubbo sprouts transparent bee wings and zooms up. Charlie decides to stay back and make sure nobody is left behind, calmly slithering up the wall as a shapeless pile of goop, leaving a wet trail behind.

When they all arrive at the central garden, they see Dream peacefully carving a mask with an elegant whittling knife, wood shavings litter around him and the broken fountain that he's sat on. He looks to be wearing just a simple cloak and mask, however, underneath are long flowing robes, decorated with glowing jewelry to inform others of his status as a god, even if said god is a mortal reincarnation. The masked deity looks up at the teens and slime then stands, brushing the wood shavings off of himself and willing his knife and unfinished mask to disappear into his inventory (or at least, that’s what the four assumed where the items disappeared off to).

“So? How are your powers?”

“Awesome!” shouts Tommy as blue lightning flashes at his very fingertips, ready to strike anything its user commands it to. Tubbo continues to fly around with his wings, throwing thick magic orbs with the consistency of honey at Ranboo while he switches between his human form and his smoke form as he dashes around and away from Tubbo’s magic honey onslaught, laughing loudly with the prince of Manberg. Charlie moves to Dream’s side, reshaping himself to take the form of a human before taking his mask off, restoring him back to flesh and bones. 

“Looks like you guys got the hang of it already, and now for ideas.” Dream stretches a hand at a patch of the dead garden that surrounds the fountain and lifts his hand, similar to how a puppeteer lifts his puppets by the strings tied to his fingertips. Rising from the garden are wooden masks that glow a menacing green, tendrils coming out from the back of the mask, twisting and weaving into each other, the final result being a green spectral body with various uniforms and weapons. Some took the form of archers, other are knights.

“I’ve been thinking of repairing this place and ending the war, don’t you agree, your majesties?”

The trio’s eyes glow brighter in amazement and excitement as they stare at the masked army that Dream summoned.

“Yeah! Let’s conquer the other kingdoms! We have so much time, and the only kingdom that’s actively looking for one of us is the Antarctic Empire,” says Charlie as he bounces up and down, eager to see what more this loop has to offer.

Chapter Text

“Oh, L’Manberg won its independence. And the war was to prove their strength. Guess this is a peaceful loop.”

Dream comments as soon as the other loopers arrive at their meeting spot.

“I don’t think we planned anything from the previous loop. You guys have anything in mind?”

Dream was met with silence as the others just stared at him with their version of a wide smile. Ranboo’s is a lot wider, reaching for his ears, Charlie’s is almost meeting his eyes, and Tommy’s is showing all of his teeth. Tubbo is just grinning and looks very much normal compared to the others, but still, seeing them all smiling at him makes him feel uneasy about what plans they have in store for this loop.

In this loop, everyone has a core in the shape of a heart located in their chest. This heart is actually separate from the person’s soul, acting as a source of one's personality rather than life force, and without it, they are but a mere shell of who they once were, a husk. Of course, the action is not immediate, the first few moments being filled by panic or rage in an attempt to take back their hearts before turning into a husk. Once finally returned, their reaction depends on many variables such as who returned it, their mental state before and after the separation, and so on.

Dream was not given the time to sort through this loop’s memories to know this knowledge when Charlie shoved a floating yellow-orange heart into his hands, then was pushed by Tubbo and Ranboo to a clearing in the forest where he found the husk of Wilbur, and Tommy who just so happen to be leaving at that exact moment, taking the other teens and Charlie with him.

He didn’t really know what else to do other than listen to what his gut instincts were telling him to do, so he stepped forward and hesitantly pressed the glowing core into Wilbur’s chest, who only observed his movements with disinterest in his blank and grey eyes.

Skip to the present, Dream blinks from behind his mask as he sits across a lovestruck Wilbur who has his chin resting on the palm of his hand. The two leaders are currently sitting by a table on a railed cliff that has the perfect view of the star-covered night sky and the glittering ocean below. Between them is a pizza that’s served by Tommy in a waiter’s outfit and a glued-on mustache.

The masked man has no idea how he got here nor does he have a choice to leave as he is very much sure that Ranboo will just teleport him back and Charlie, the very much omnipresent slime that he is, will just snitch on him.

When he was told that he needed to relax from all the injuries and torture he subjects himself into for the sake of entertaining them or just getting them out of trouble by taking the blame, or even from having to do most of the work such as resource gathering or manipulating people into behaving a certain way for them at times, he wasn’t expecting this.

Just what the hell did they write in the Storybook to make this specific loop happen?

“So Dream, tell me about yourself,” Wilbur delicately broke the silence, eyes half-lidded as he gazed into Dream’s mask’s eyes.

...you know what? Might as well make this work.

He is so glad he listened to Tubbo and wore a gold ring with Quackity’s initials beforehand. According to this loop, there are such things called core rings, rings made from the essence of one's core. Wearing one indicates that the wearer is currently intimate with someone else (doesn’t have to be romantic) and is considering bonding with them through a process called an exchange, a process that Dream will have to figure out later on.

For now, he leans his elbows onto the table, fingers interlocking with each other to rest his head against them. He positioned his hands in a way to subtly display his ring towards Wilbur, and from the way the Brit’s eyes darken just a tiny bit, Dream can tell that he can see it.

“Well, what would you like to know?”

“Tubbo, why?”

“We already told you-”

“That I needed to relax, but really? This? Why can’t I just, I don’t know, be locked in a good prison with decent food?”

“Because one, that sucks, and two, we’re still technically messing with the server so, why not? Think of all the destruction and chaos they would do in your name!”

“...you just wanted me to reenact those fanfictions we found in the ‘modern-day’ loops.”

“And that. Now go!” Tubbo shoves Dream forward and shoos him away. Dream lets out a loud sigh as he walks out from the shadows of the stage with an envelope in hand. Today is election day and instead of Wilbur, he was the one that’s supposed to announce the winners of the election.

In this loop, Wilbur is pretty decent, on the road to madness (albeit for a different reason), but still okay enough to have won the elections with Tommy as his vice.

Dream steps to the side to let Wilbur do his speech. He can very much see Quackity silently fuming as he follows the other participants off the stage. Because his presence isn’t needed anymore, he goes after Quackity, following this loop’s pre-made story before the loopers came along. In this loop, he’s apparently really close with Quackity, much like family, and to the duck hybrid, it meant a lot due to him being part duck (as ducks are territorial with family), and due to the fact that he lost his previous family in an incident.

Quickly catching up to the duck hybrid, grabbing him by the hand and leading him to the back of the stage, Dream gently places his hands onto the Mexican’s shoulders. “Hey, you alright?”

Quackity stays silent, tears of frustration threatening to spill from his eyes as he looks anywhere but at Dream. “...you did your best, Quackity.”

Slowly pulling the winged man into a hug, Dream sways them from side to side while rubbing his back, Quackity hugging Dream back a bit tighter than he expected, but he didn’t falter in his attempts at comforting the duck hybrid.

Once Quackity calmed down, Dream decided then that it was time to offer him what this loop calls as an exchange in essence. It is a process where two people willingly take their cores out and bring them close to each other, letting their essences swirl into the other, the pair are then labeled as coremates. How long the exchange lasts and how much color mixes in their respective cores depends on the relationship that the parties involved have. You could have more than one coremate, but it all comes down to the person’s preference.

To Quackity, a coremate can only be with family.

Dream places a hand over his heart, willing his light green core to leave his chest. He cups the floating core in his palm and extends it to Quackity, who has new tears forming from his eyes, but not from frustration, from shock and happiness. Quackity quickly pulls his own core out, holding his gold core close to Dream’s, letting the two hearts swap essences.

The more they exchanged, the more Dream can feel Quackity’s overwhelming love and joy for him and this moment. Dream can’t help but feel nervous yet relieved. At the little hint of worry in their newly made bond and in Quackity’s faltering smile, Dream quickly comes up with a lie (that he later found out was actually the truth when he digs more into his memories later on). “I’ve never done this before, Quackity. You’re my first.”

And, there it was again, the feeling of joy warming Dream from the inside, this time mixed with a sense of understanding. Once their cores have half of its original color, Dream’s being covered in swirling gold stripes while Quackity’s being covered in disappearing and reappearing splotches of light green, they return their cores back into their chests.

The gold and green core rings worn by Dream and Quackity respectively both vanish from their ring fingers, now materializing as something else. Dream appears to have spectral gold wings on his back, and Quackity has a transparent light green mask at the side of his face. A wide smile forms on the duck hybrid’s face as he feels Dream’s satisfaction through their corebond.

They leave backstage, Quackity joining the other participants of the election that stand in a uniform line, sliding right next to George, who gives Quackity a lookover before giving him a congratulatory pat on the back. Dream went to the back of the crowd to stand beside Ranboo, who merely gave a minuscule nod at Dream with a barely seen smile as he continued to look forward, paying attention to Wilbur’s speech. Ranboo isn’t supposed to know who Dream is at this point of the loop and plan.

Dream can feel Wilbur’s eyes on him as he flexes his transparent wings.

All according to plan.

Dream sits in Niki’s bakery, eating cookies across from his familial coremate, Quackity. They both were waiting for George, Sapnap, and Karl. In the meantime, Dream absentmindedly listens to him talk about his romantic interest in Schlatt, who is also a decent person in this loop, and is Tubbo’s nonalcoholic dad. Dream is seriously still wondering what the other loopers wrote that made this specific loop possible.

A ping! notifies Dream that he received a message from his communicator. He reads it very quickly, being mindful of his emotions as he sees who it came from. Of course, it’s from Wilbur.

“Sorry, Quackity. Wilbur needs me for something important.” He says, getting up while stretching his wings out. Quackity immediately moves to grab him by the arm, a pang of alarm and concern flowing into Dream’s core, originating from the man who stopped him, “Dream, I- uh.”

Dream patiently waits for Quackity to explain himself, or the panicked feeling he’s getting from him, even if he knows why. For the past few days after the election, Dream’s been intentionally leading Quackity to where Wilbur is thanks to Charlie leading him around while avoiding Quackity’s line of sight. No doubt Quackity saw the way Wilbur looked at them. He has also been purposefully giving Wilbur less of his attention and spending more time with Quackity.

“Just...be careful with him.” Quackity hesitantly lets go of Dream's arm, the latter giving a single slow nod as he makes his way out to meet with L’Manberg’s president. As much as he didn’t want his coremate to speak with Wilbur alone, he can’t force him to neglect his duties as the server’s Admin.

Spreading his transparent gold wings, Dream uses a firework to fly up into the sky, then glide down to the White House where Wilbur wishes to speak to him. Before landing, he caught a glimpse of Ranboo waving at him from the roof of the building, ready to do his part of the plan.

Dream did a dive roll across the path leading to the White House, kneeling to a stop, he stood up to dust himself off, wings folding behind his back. He brings his communicator out to notify Wilbur of his arrival before entering.

What’s going to happen next is possibly going to be painful.

Expectedly, he was right.

Having your core forcefully removed from your own chest hurts as the glowing heart that essentially holds one’s emotions uses its own essence to pull itself back in. The panic and rage right after it was completely removed was also expected, but Dream couldn’t control himself, not that he was trying to as he lashed against the chains and binds that held him.

Being a husk wasn’t so bad. It reminded him of the cold emptiness of being trapped alone in a torture chamber surrounded by lava in the original timeline.

Dream examines Wilbur with green-grey eyes, looking bored as the obsessed madman uses his yellow-orange core to switch Quackity’s yellow essence with his own, the sweeping gold stripes on Dream’s core now replaced with jagged spots of yellow-orange that spontaneously appears and fades, reminiscent of explosions.

Back in the bakery, Quackity, who has been listening to Karl’s idea of constructing a library, suddenly gasps as he grips onto his short sleeve dress shirt where his heart is, feeling bursts of heat radiating from his core as he struggles to breathe against the agonizing pain.

George, Sapnap, and Karl all jump in surprise, immediately crowding around him as they try to ask him what’s wrong.

The duck hybrid pulls his core out with great struggle, sweat dripping from his forehead as he stares wide-eyed in horror. The light green essence of Dream was evaporating into smoke that dissipated into the air, the same happening with the transparent mask that sits on the side of his head.

Unbeknownst to the troubled group of friends, Ranboo writes what he sees into his Memory Book from the corner of the bakery, not for the reason to remember, but for Dream to see as the book is enchanted to let the reader see what the writer saw.

The aftermath of this part of the plan is where Dream can finally rest for all of the hard work and suffering he had to endure for them these past few loops.

“Hold on just a little longer, Dream,” Ranboo takes a bite out of his cupcake to hide his amused smile as he listens to Quackity sob out that he couldn’t feel his coremate anymore while desperately cupping his core in a vain attempt at keeping what little green essence he has left.

“Just a little longer.”

Dream hugs a sobbing Fundy, rocking him back and forth in the comfort of a guest bedroom hidden under the White House. Fundy continues to cry out apologies as he curls deeper into Dream’s embrace, a hand clutching at his chest, remembering the pain of having his orange core forcefully removed.

On the topic of cores, if the person’s original core is somehow lost or destroyed, they could either option A, wait for another core to form and take its place, which is a rare occurrence in and of itself, or option B, (temporarily/permanently) replace the lost core. The replacement/core substitute can either be (a) small item(s), or a core made of the essence of one or more cores, although this option will cause major changes in personality either way.

Option B can be used as a form of mind control as replacing the core with the essence of another’s core can make the person be more willing to follow the suggestions and demands of the one who provided the essence. This is what happened to Fundy.

Fundy’s core was removed by Wilbur with Tommy’s help and had it switched with a core of his own essence, making the fox hybrid follow what Wilbur wanted him to do, which was to help Tommy distract and restrain Dream to do a forced exchange.

Dream can agree that having his own core tampered with, no matter how gentle it was compared to Fundy, was very much unpleasant. He did, however, get some good out of it. This part of the plan is done, and he now has the ability to create small sparks and explosions from his hands.

He lets Fundy fall asleep from exhaustion, carefully lowering and tucking him into bed before he reaches for his communicator. He has been missing since he left the bakery, which was somewhere in the morning, now it’s night, and his communicator was filled with private messages from his friends, mostly from Quackity.

Dream rubs his chest where he feels a warped form of love coming from Wilbur as he reads a new message that popped up.

WilburSoot whispers to you: Goodnight, love.

Now to wait for midnight to meet up with the others.

“How was it, big D?”

“If it weren’t for the loops that prepared me for a world of pain, it wasn’t as bad.”

“Alright. Charlie will watch over the door and warn you whenever Wilbur comes down to visit. Ranboo should be visiting too to show you what's been happening. All you have to do is sit back and relax.”

“Okay.” Dream lays back down on his extremely soft and comfortable bed. Even though the space he is provided with is similar to an apartment, it still somewhat feels like he’s being held in a prison, though he really doesn’t want to argue with Tommy or any of the other loopers with that.

“Oh, and remember-”

“Drink doses of the potions, I know.” Said potions are lined up in his inventory. The potions were made to induce a certain emotion. With corebonds sharing the true emotions of coremates, Dream has been using these specific potions to help deepen his connections with Quackity, though after using so much to play along and manipulate the duck hybrid, he’s just emotionally drained now. No doubt Wilbur can feel that but will most likely mistake it as the aftereffects of his stunt.

“Go raise hell, Tommy.”

“Enjoy the show and good night, big D!”

Tubbo watches from the sidelines with his dad, Schlatt, as members of the Dream SMP faction charge into L’Manberg with full netherite armor and weapons in hand, Quackity leading the group with his wings flared out as an open show of aggression.

“WILBUR!” Quackity roared at the man grinning that stood at the front of the White House. Quackity grits his teeth at the sight of the translucent smiley mask that sits innocently on the side of Wilbur’s head. That mask is supposed to be his, not Wilbur’s.

“Hello, Quackity. Pleasant of you to come and visit me.”

“Where is Dream, Wilbur?” Sapnap loudly demands as he points his sword at the man in question.

“Did he not return to you? He left after we were done with our discussion.” The hidden glint of madness in his half-lidded eyes does not go unnoticed by Quackity. His wings snap shut as he makes an attempt to charge at him, only to be held back by Punz.

Schlatt wraps his arm around Tubbo’s shoulders as he lightly tugs him along and away from the scene. He smiles at his son in reassurance, but Tubbo knew that he was nervous about the situation. “C’mon, kid. Let’s keep going, don’t look.”

“Okay, dad.”

Tubbo already knows that this entire loop was written in the Storybook to be peaceful on purpose, heck, he also added some ideas to help mold this loop's creation, but why did he have to have Schlatt as a good dad? Now he doesn’t have a reason to be rude without looking weird or suspicious. The young ram hybrid inwardly cringes every time he has to address Schlatt as such, no matter how good he is in this loop or any other loop.

He can only wait for his part of the plan to cause more chaos in this timeline as he continues to play his role as a good and proud son of Schlatt.

And his wait pays off as he takes on a new role.

Tubbo pulls against his bindings to reach for Schlatt’s outstretched hand from between the iron bars of his cage. Tommy’s performance greatly improved over the timelines as he grips onto the chain connecting to Tubbo’s metal collar and yanks, the young ram’s cries for his father cut off as he gags at the sudden pull.

“Tubbo! TUBBO! Tommy, what the fuck are you doing?!” Schlatt snarled out as he slammed his body against the bars, the cage holding him rattling forward.

“Hey! Come closer and I’ll fuckin’ kill ‘em!” Tommy grabbed onto Tubbo’s chin and forced him to tilt his head up as he grabbed an enchanted netherite axe from his inventory, placing the blade right up against his throat. Schlatt’s movements cease, now shaking as he stares wide-eyed, his heart shattering at Tubbo’s crocodile tears and terrified sniffles.

“C’mon, Tubbo, let’s hang out in the other room,” Tommy says in feigned cheeriness as he drags the ram into a room with a giant window for the loopers’ viewing pleasures at Schlatt’s reaction to what comes next.

Tommy arranges the chains to have Tubbo completely restrained on the floor, a foot digging into the hybrid’s stomach as he puts his axe away. One hand presses on Tubbo’s neck while the other hovers over the ram’s heart.

Dream must have a really high pain tolerance because Tubbo felt like his chest was being ripped open. Tubbo screams in pain, although he increases his volume in exaggeration for the sake of drama as Tommy uses his own red essence to forcibly dig out Tubbo’s core.

Schlatt’s own voice screams out in plea to stop as his attempts at escaping resume, tears falling from his eyes as he feels phantom pains coming from his own core.

Despite being in pain, Tubbo was in no rush, more so focused on his act, thrashing about in a vain attempt to escape. Finally, when Tommy holds his forest green core, Tubbo goes limp, head rolling to the side to see Schlatt’s breath hitching at the sight of his bright eyes turning into a bland shade of blue.

“Alright, Tubs, we’re gonna have loads of fun.” Tommy places the forest green core into his inventory, now holding a new core made of Tommy’s red essence, sand, and gunpowder. Ignoring Schlatt's protests once more, he presses the core into Tubbo’s chest.

They both wait as Tubbo’s body familiarizes with the new core provided, and Schlatt can only sob as his son’s bland blue eyes brighten back to their original shade of blue with a glint of mischief in them.

“Hey, Tubbo, wanna help me with something?” Tommy asks as he unlocks Tubbos’ bindings.

“Sure! What is it, bossman?” Tubbo gets up with Tommy’s help, rubbing at his wrists yet not acknowledging what has previously happened to him or why he was restrained to begin with.

“It’s about your dad,” Tommy points his thumb at the distraught father. Schlatt grits his teeth as Tubbo turns to look at him with a big smile on his face.

“It felt really weird,” Tubbo coughed out while rubbing his chest. His original core wasn’t returned until he understood the way he acted with the new core, and boy was he going to have fun acting it out later on.

“I know, right?” Dream pours a potion in a shot glass and gulps its contents. He can feel himself calming down, an air of serenity filling him.

“Are Ranboo and Charlie going to be part of the chaos or are they just watching?”

“Ranboo’s already involved, why do you think Fundy stays quiet about everything? As for Charlie, he’s satisfied with making sure that our plans run smoothly.”

The two continue to idly chat in the White House’s underground apartment as they take turns using Ranboo’s enchanted Memory Book. Then, a little slime ball came slithering out from the book. Immediately, Tubbo snatches the book before teleporting away via a pearl in a stasis chamber in an undisclosed location that’s guarded by Charlie.

Dream pulls a book from his inventory, casually reading it on the living room couch. Three gentle knocks sound from the door before Wilbur expectedly comes in with a love-stricken smile. He lightly shuts the door behind him, taking off his trenchcoat and hanging it on a nearby rack, he joins Dream on the couch, pulling him onto his lap where he embraces the man from behind, his chin resting on his shoulder, pretending to read along with the pages of Dream’s book.

“Hello, Wilbur.” Dream nonchalantly flips to the next page.

“I missed you.” Whispers the man behind him, his captor and planned caretaker of his planned relaxation loop planned by the other loopers.

“I believe you saw me this morning, Wilby.” A stutter of shock made way for the familiar flood of happiness and affection, Wilbur’s cheeks in hues of pink as he hugs Dream tighter with a gentle laugh, having no desire to break the quiet and calm atmosphere of Dream’s glorified prison chamber where he’ll most likely spend most of his time in this loop.

As disturbing as this situation is, Dream didn’t mind. It felt nice, being cared for, even if it’s in the creepiest way possible. He places the book down to his side to reward Wilbur by twisting around to return the embrace.

Though as nice as everything is, it is getting just a tad bit boring.

Chapter Text

The loopers don’t have many expectations when first waking up into a new loop.

They, however, did not expect the sight around them.

They awoke to find themselves standing in front of a gargantuan palace left in ruins, the skies a dark shade of grey, threatening them with a storm that promises heavy rain.

Tommy, Tubbo, and Ranboo all turn to Dream and Charlie, the more knowledgeable of the loopers. They find Dream taking his mask off to reveal his equally puzzled expression, with Charlie looking around in childlike curiosity.

Charlie immediately runs forward and up the staircase, ignoring the startled cries for him to stop and wait as the family of loopers rush after the awed slime humanoid.

They enter the castle’s entrance to find it mostly empty, save for Charlie, who has his back turned to them, in front of him is a potted lilac flower on top of a pedestal.

“Charlie?” Tommy’s voice bounced around the empty enclosed space around them, mixing with the audio of their footsteps as approached the slime who as his head bowed down.

“Look, everyone.” Charlie turns to face them, in his hands is a purple book. “This was beside the flower.”

The loopers crowd around him to read the book’s contents.

Welcome to your new home, loopers.

Who I am is unimportant as we will never meet, and I am to blame for that.

I am also to blame for your fate in being trapped in a time loop, along with others. There is nothing I can do to fix it.

I can, however, provide you with things that could help you cope with your imprisoned destinies.

Here is where everything went wrong, where the entities damned this timeline to either have you live in misery or die in agony. They cursed this server with what little power they had left in an attempt to stay alive. I am sorry you had to pay the price.

This was once their home called the Inbetween, but they are not here now, not anymore.

I realized some time ago that soon, the Storybook that I led Charlie to discover will soon be full, and you will lose what little control you have left in your doomed reality. So here is yet another gift from me to you.

This will be your permanent home, a place that will remain untouched from the loops. You may change it to however you like, and you may add whoever you like, although they will most certainly act how you wish for them to act, puppets for you to program.

Good luck with your future timelines, know that I will only be able to communicate with you through this book and that my replies will be very scarce. Your timeline can allow me to act for so much before severe consequences fall upon you and your server.

Oddly enough, the loopers felt no anger. They were already resigned to their fate. In some sick sense, they saw themselves as gods of some sort, or perhaps that’s just them being delusional from how long they’ve been doing these loops.

What they can agree on, however, is that it’s nice to have someone outside of these loops, even if they claim that they’re to blame for it.

With the book given to them by the stranger they have decided to call Magenta, they left questions before they went and explored their new gift, to familiarize this domain that they now can call home.

After what felt like hours of aimless wandering and quiet chatting, they begin rearranging this plain of existence with the help of Magenta’s instructions found within the pages of their book, and for Dream to translate whatever big words and gibberish that were in said book.

A pleasant surprise for them is a library filled with their adventures. What’s not a pleasant surprise are the books that tell of their first loops, filled with pain, confusion, betrayal, and many more. Stories that told of their time as wannabe-heroes, of the naive hope that they could get out and finally achieve a happy ending where everyone lives.

Tales of times before they realized that every ending was going to be a bad ending, that the only good ending they can ever achieve are ones where they're at the very top, where they’re the kings and rulers of the server, where they decide who lives and who dies, where they are the villains.

Those books are hidden away in a separate library, hidden under a large tree. They don’t wish to remember their time when they were weak.

An unfamiliar exhaustion crashes over all of them, very unlike the familiar tiredness after finishing a loop and waking up in a new one.

Perhaps this is the exhaustion compiled from all of their loops. It would make sense. They always felt as if they’ve had a long rest with each new loop.

Looks like they’ll be having their first real break here in the Interlude, right after getting it too.

Chapter Text

In a nation named Esempei, there is a state known as L’Manburg, and in that state can be found a neighborhood with strange happenings.

During the day, the neighborhood looks to be the perfect place for nature lovers to live, lots of greenery can be found, there’s even a nearby forest. At night, it is...different, but people don’t seem to mind. For the most part, at least.

Walking down a particularly dark street, a brunette shivers under his layers of clothes. Despite traveling down a dimly lit pathway in the middle of summer, he still felt cold, and will always feel cold as he searches for a new place to stay.

Ahead of him, he sees someone wearing a red hoodie, speedwalking towards him with eyes going which way and that, as if paranoid that something might jump at him. He seems to be covered in mud and leaves.

"...is that..?"

Abruptly stopping to a halt, he glances behind him, watching the teen he suspects is his old friend walking further and further away, leaving behind mud trails that are mixed with some other dark liquid.

Instead of calling out, the man decides to follow the messy teen, hoping to both clearly catch his face, and answer the question as to why he looked the way he did.

Passing by houses, brick buildings, down alleyways, and even taking a shortcut off the road and into the woods, The blond teen stops in front of a cemetery, much to the man’s confusion as he stops a few feet away from him.

“Thomas?” The teen’s shoulder tenses up. He slowly turns to face the cold man, face covered in mud and that unknown dark substance.

What greets him is the wide and cold pale blue eyes of Thomas Krake’n.

Since that night, Wilburt has been looking for two things: A new, preferably warm, place to stay, and Thomas.

The cemetery is where he usually catches Thomas before he either runs away or disappears altogether.

Now, it’s past midnight. He’s sitting at an empty 24-hour cafe in the corner, sipping on a cup of coffee as he diligently works on editing a video for his new employer, Charles, who runs a show called SlimeCases that focuses on the supernatural and true crime.

The door’s bells gently chime as a new customer enters the dimly lit cafe. Wilburt Instinctively looks up from his laptop to find a pair of old friends that he didn’t expect to meet, a blond man wearing a white facemask with a simple smile on it, and a black-haired teenager whose skin is half white and half black, split right down the middle in a clean line. The teen also wears a facemask alongside a pair of sunglasses despite it being dark.

Wilburt’s brain short-circuits at seeing them here, acting as if nothing is wrong. He merely watches them both exit the establishment with a cup of their own beverages. They both leave a trail of dust at their feet, but the masked man’s dust shines under the little light that hits it.

The Brit always feels cold but never has he felt even colder at seeing two people he thought were dead.

Questioning his own head and memory, he takes a little break from his work to surf through the web for a singular months old article. There it was, the first link that pops up.

“Two suspects of an illegal gambling business were found dead in a prison at Pandoria.

Claye Watson and Rohn B. Derman had been taken in by police as suspects involving a case of an illegal gambling business and were held in prison to await trial. Evidence showed that they were innocent.

The suspected murderers are Sam E. Alson, a warden that watched over them, and Alex Q. Wikity, a police officer who suspected them. The police have been searching for the two suspects now on the run.”

Wilburt doesn’t dare scroll down to know the rest of the details or the images that are shown. Claye’s head bleeding profusely as glass shards scatter around him, some embedded into his body. Rohn, an asthmatic, died due to asphyxiation, the cell they were held in was anything but clean, a layer of dust covering everything. Everyone knew that Rohn was murdered though, as purple bruises can be seen wrapped around his neck.

He thinks back to the two people who had entered the cafe. It must just be a coincidence that they looked so similar to his deceased friends.

Right?

Wilburt mourns for yet another friend that’s lost to the hands of death.

Tobias Watson was rushed into the emergency room after neighbors phoned the authorities of violent activity and loud noises coming from the Watson house.

It was known that Jay S. Watson didn’t handle the death of his oldest son well, so he resorted to drinking. Nobody knew that he was abusing his only surviving son, though, always thinking that the teen’s lack of smiles was because of Claye’s death, that he was still mourning.

Wilburt now stands in front of a gravestone that marks where Tobias is buried, right next to his brother Claye, and right beside him is Rohn. He leaves once the tears are dry, after all, he still has a job to do for Charles, and a potentially warm apartment to rent.

The sounds of leaves crushing under someone else’s feet causes him to pause at the cemetery’s gateway. Turning around, Wilburt sees a figure in a red hoodie kneeling down on Tobias’ grave.

From how far is his, plus with the little to no lighting, Wilburt is not sure who or what they’re doing, but he can guess that it’s Thomas again, grieving for Tobias who he vaguely remembers is his best friend.

Wilburt has so many questions for him but now seems to be a bad time. He reluctantly leaves the cemetery without realizing that he’s being watched.

It has been a good week or so, Wilburt would admit. Charles found out about his living situation and now he’s rooming with him. They’ve grown to be friends rather than just being an employer and an employee, which is nice. Plus, the heating of the house is amazing, although he still feels somewhat cold, it doesn't really bother him anymore. Wilburt considers himself lucky.

And he has no idea how long that luck is going to last.

Soft knocking comes from his door, pulling him away from the screen of his laptop, which made him aware of how his muscles ached at being in the same position for hours on end. He stretches his arms and back while answering to the person knocking, “Yes?”

“Hey Wilburt, uh, my cameraman got sick and I need someone to replace him for the next video. I was wondering maybe you’d wanna help? Get out the house and walk around for a bit?” Comes the voice of Charles from the other side of the door.

Wilburt contemplated the offer, and it didn’t take him long to accept.

And now here they are, with two other additional friends of Charles’, they explore a mansion that’s presumably haunted. Jokes were added here and there while Charles talks about its history and reported ghost sightings.

Wilburt is going to be honest and say that he felt cold, despite having worn thick clothes beforehand thanks to his ex-employer-now-roommate-and-friend Charles’ giving him a warning. Besides being cold, he felt like he was being watched, which in turn, makes him uncomfortable, as if the strange lifelike dolls placed all around the mansion and the wide and empty spaces weren’t bad enough.

Trails of dust would fly past their feet, the sounds of glass shifting, and footsteps echoing remained unnoticed and unheard to all except Wilburt as he tries to focus on keeping the camera steady.

Now they were on break, Charles thankfully taking the camera and leaving him in a lit and warm room that is the entrance where he could leave if he ever felt too uncomfortable. He sits on a chair and cups his hands close to his mouth, blowing hot air to warm them up.

Down the dark hallway, Wilburt freezes at the sight of Claye’s green eyes glowing at the end of the hall. He gets up, quickly grabs a spare flashlight, and begins going after a friend he thought was dead.

The further he went down the seemingly endless dark hallway, the colder he got, so much so that he can see his breath now. The sound of glass breaking under Claye’s feet is prominent against the silent corridor.

Claye stops in the middle of a large room, and once Wilburt enters, the double doors shut behind him with Rohn and Tobias keeping it closed. Thomas walks in from somewhere, standing beside Claye. The flashlight in his hand begins to flicker, but he can still clearly see their appearances now.

The little skin that can be seen on Claye has deep cuts that open and close with his movements, blood heavily trickling down his head from an unknown injury. Glass littered around his feet and on his shoes. Thomas looks to have minor scratches, his skin a lot paler than what he can remember. Dirt and blood covered his body, most especially his hands. Rohn seems to be making wheezing noises every once in a while as if struggling to breathe. Dust danced all around him as a painful-sounding cough forced itself out of his throat. Tobias isn’t wearing any casual attire like the others previously mentioned, rather wearing a hospital gown that covered most of the bruises that he received while still alive. Now that Wilburt thinks about it, they were all wearing the last thing they wore when they were- are?- alive.

“Hey, Wilburt. Long time no see.”

Thomas is the first to break the silence.

And on this particular night, he's reunited with his beloved friends. He wishes he can be happy, but it proves to be a challenge when forced to realize why he's as cold as ever.

In a nation named Esempei, there is a state known as L’Manburg, and in that state can be found a neighborhood with strange happenings.

Those strange happenings occurred in the night. One of those strange happenings is of a man in many layers of clothing that brought with him the hints of winter. Snowflakes flow from his jacket and wet footsteps trail behind him. His circular glasses don’t seem to fog from the chilly air that surrounds him, even if his visible breath hits them directly as he moves forward.

Sometimes he is accompanied by his ghostly friends on his aimless stroll around the neighborhood. He doesn’t make a comment on their dirtied appearances, even if he notices that some of them are bloodier than they should be.

All he cares about is pretending to live his life as if he’s still alive, for he is restless until Kai, his once-friend-now-murderer, is dead just like him and his companions.

“Gonna be honest, this is a pretty chill loop.”

“Yeah, we should be ghosts more often.”

“Just to be clear, are we actively killing people by possessing them as we did with Wilbur and that Kai guy, or are we leading them to their death?”

“Why not both? Just as long as we’re not getting any big attention.”

Charles- Charlie, the only living human of the loopers, opens the door to the roof of an abandoned building where the four ghosts are waiting for him while discussing the events of the loop thus far. He interrupts the conversation by updating them of his barely at-home roommate. “Wilbur is pretending that he’s alive while also hating my other editor. He might do something drastic, though.”

Tobias- Tubbo crosses his arms, “He’s only active at night, plus he was a naturally cold person when he was alive and looks the most alive compared to all of us. We don’t really need to try and hide him yet. If anything, he’s just going to do our job at making another ghost.”

“And if this gets out to the public?” Rohn- Ranboo pitched in with a raised brow.

“We disguise it as an ARG. People in modern loops love those.” Thomas- Tommy suggests from his spot on the railing, uncaring that he might fall off. It doesn’t really matter to any of them if he did fall because one, he’s a ghost, and two, they felt worse than falling off a ten-story tall building, in fact, they already experienced that.

“You have to admit though, the themes of our ghosts in relation to our deaths are pretty cool. We should replicate these for another loop.” Claye- Dream says as he shakes his hands in front of him, glass shards and specks of blood fall from them, forming a little pile by his feet.

“You and Ranboo’s are cool, ours are fucking generic as shit,” Tommy grumbled as he flung mud and blood with a kick of his foot towards Dream who manages to get out of the way in time.

“Oh come on, Tommy, it’s not that bad. And you’re the only one beside Charlie that looks normal. Messy, but normal.” Tubbo doesn’t look up from his messily bandaged arm. He unravels the bandages to find more bandages underneath, seemingly never-ending the more he peeled the dirty dressing off. “I look like some kid who couldn’t decide on dressing up as either a mummy or a ghost for Halloween.”

“...you know what, yeah."

Chapter Text

New loop, new idea, new changes to be made.

Problem, Dream and Tommy are on a boat, and judging by the way the latter looks and from what they can remember from their original timeline, Tommy is being escorted by Dream for his second exile.

Tommy loudly groans into his hands while Dream lets out a heavy sigh. They were hoping that this loop would happen somewhere between the aftermath of the war for L’Manberg’s independence and during the start of the Manberg-Pogtopia war, but nope, they had to end up where Tommy is being sent to his exile island.

Dream resumes rowing them to Tommy’s exile location, ignoring Tommy grumbling under his breath about their plans being ruined. They stayed silent, even as they were setting up camp when they finally arrived on land.

Dream is just leading a bunch of chickens he found to a newly built pen when Tommy suddenly gooes in front of him and claps his hands onto his shoulders, causing the chickens to run away in surprise. Before Dream could utter a word or even ask a question, Tommy looked at Dream dead in the eyes- or where his eyes should be since he still has his mask on- and said the following, “I am not going to let this stop us, we’re doing it, don’t care that we skipped a large chunk of the plan, we can still do it.”

Dream and Tommy stare at each other, the former having to process everything that the teen in front of him said before he finally answers, “Actually, Charlie has an idea that can work perfectly with this time.”

“WHAT!?” is the only clear word Tubbo can hear from the wall of loud protests and surprise as he announced that he will be stepping down and letting Fundy be L’Manberg’s new president.

He doesn’t give any more reason other than that he doesn’t see himself fit to be the president anymore and that he just wants to retire and be at peace, with an added excuse that he wasn’t mentally ready to take up the responsibility of fixing a damaged nation, especially after Wilbur’s death.

There were still some protests, but what’s done is done. Tubbo leaves with Ranboo sticking to his side as he gently places a hand on his shoulder, acting as if he’s comforting the mourning ex-president.

Once they were far enough away, Ranboo teleported them to where Charlie was first found and offered the blonde- what’s up with Tubbo being either a brunette sheep hybrid or a blonde human, or some combination of the two in different loops? - half of his stack of TNT.

Before they could start placing them, however, they were stopped by the very slime himself that just broke a dirt block and slithered his way out of the hole he created. Ranboo places a spare white t-shirt, pants, and shoes onto the ground, letting the slime seep into the clothing and begin forming a humanoid figure. Looks like Charlie is full slime in this loop rather than a hybrid.

Once he’s done, Charlie stands up and waves at them, “Hello again, Tubbo and Ranboo!”

“Hey, Charlie. We’re gonna be busy, so I say we gather some materials before we meet up with the other guys.” Tubbo hands the slime spare iron tools from his inventory, as well as an extra communicator for him to use.

“Oh! What are we going to do in this loop?”

“We’ll know when we see them. All I know is that Dream is going Exdee for a bit.”

Ever since Fundy was made president, L’Manberg seems to be going well. Reconstructions have been in progress with little problems, the people have healed and are working harmoniously.

Then, things got weird.

Tubbo has been disappearing every once in a while, and then suddenly, he just vanished. Actually, now that Fundy thinks about it, Punz disappeared too, and it seems like Niki might be next.

Please hit Fundy on the head because he has this feeling that it has something to do with the Cat Maid Cafe that just opened up where George’s house used to be. He feels stupid to think that the weirdos inside would be involved with anything about the missing people, but he couldn’t exactly ignore the fact that most people who started visiting that cafe also started disappearing until they’re just gone.

With Quackity and Ranboo by his side, the fox takes a deep breath as he enters the white and pink building. They’re immediately greeted by a clowder of cats running up to rub themselves against their legs while some were just meowing to get their attention the moment they all heard the entrance’s bell chiming.

“Nya! Welcome to the Cat Maid Cafe, masters!” Greets two voices, HBomb and Antfrost. The swarmed trio of customers look dumbfounded at the current situation they found themselves in. Is this cat-filled establishment really a threat to the nation?

“Ah, yes hello, we’re here to, uh, search this place-”

“Please do, master! Search us as well!” Fundy and Quackity immediately push Ranboo towards the two cat maids while they speedwalk to some other area with a trail of cats following them. The two non-loopers don’t see Ranboo giving them an uncharacteristic glare before turning to the two turquoise-eyed cat maids to “distract them”.

Searching around is a bit of a pain with all the cats following them, then again there isn't really all that much to look into, to begin with. It’s just a basic restaurant with a dining area, a karaoke, a kitchen, bathrooms, and that’s it.

A frustrated sigh escapes Quackity as he rubs a hand down his face, eyeing the cats at his feet. Fundy is idly petting some of the cats that somehow made it into his arms as he’s lost in thought.

Ranboo walks over with three white cups with pink paw patterns all over them, two being held in one hand. Each cup seems to be filled with coffee. He silently offers them to the two non-loopers. Quackity takes one with a grumble, Fundy absentmindedly grabs his.

They both drank some amount of the coffee before Fundy stopped to stare at the coffee in his cup. Quackity raises a brow, still drinking his coffee. The fox hybrid looks at Ranboo and notices that his still full, having gone slowly cold and now giving off a strange aroma.

“Quackity, spit it out!” The Mexican human chocks at Fundy’s alarmed order, however, it’s already too late as they both stumble, feeling rather lightheaded. Ranboo simply stands before them with a smirk with the two cat maids watching from behind with a smile that gives Fundy and Quackity a sense of dread before they finally fall unconscious.

Ranboo steps away from the bodies to flip the sign on the door to say “Closed” while taking his communicator out. He lets HBomb and Antfrost drag the new additions into a hidden underground staircase in the bathroom (why the staircase was hidden in the bathroom, Ranboo has no idea).

This is going to be weirdly amusing.

One of the server's resident ghosts awoke to find himself in a white sterile room, lit by some unseen source of light. That ghost is Ghostbur. He doesn’t know how he fell asleep and is very much confused by where he is.

“Tommy? Friend? Dream?”

As a ghost who got the short end of the spectral stick, he stands up rather than float, twirling around to look all around him, stumbling a bit as he loses his balance. He only finds one door, and he goes over to open it. Ghostbur finds a long hallway with one more door and a note by his feet. “Hello? What are you?”

With child-like curiosity, he bends down to read it, rather than picking it up. It reads: “Each new door is a new game for you to play.”

“Oh! Games! I love games!” Ghostbur shoots up, clapping his hands in excitement before quickly making his way down the hallway with a happy grin on his face. When he reaches the end of the hallway, he opens the door and steps in. The room is similar to the room he woke up in, but bigger and circular. Different colored doors line the walls of the room with Friend in the middle, his neck tied to a lead which is attached to a birch fence that’s stuck in the ceiling, and underneath the sheep is a circle that seems to be separate from the floor itself. Iron bars keep the sheep within the floor’s circle, and those bars each have a color that matches to one door.

“Friend! There you are!” The ghost runs over to pet his wooly friend through the bars, not questioning the strange room or Friend’s current situation. “Have you seen Tommy?” The sheep only lets out a “baa”. It is then that Ghostbur notices a piece of paper stuck on Friend’s wool. “You have something on you, Friend. Here, let me get it.”

The note reads as follows: “Each door leads to a game. Win and Friend will be safe.”

Confusion blossoms across the ghost’s face. “But Friend’s alright!”

Tommy leans back in his chair, watching the screen that shows Ghostbur and Friend in the circular room. “Why did we pick him again?”

“Because he can just forget about what he saw by overusing his blue to cope, he's a lot easier to control, and we don't hurt with him all that much compared to our favorites.” Dream responds, not looking up from the floating screen in front of him as he inputs commands in it before willing it to disappear.

“Is everyone ready?” Dream asked. A chorus of affirmations sounds around the observation room. “Alright, good luck you three.” With a snap of his fingers, Tommy, Tubbo, and Ranboo are teleported into position the moment Ghostbur begins turning the handle of the first door.

Dream sits in the chair Tommy was on to watch over the screen with Charlie standing beside him.

The first door leads to another large white room, but this time, there are seven chairs along with seven people: Tommy, Tubbo, Ranboo, Quackity, Punz, Fundy, and Glatt, strangely enough.

“Hello!” Ghostbur excitedly waves at them. “What game are we playing? The only responses he got are of confusion and frustration. “This is not a game, Ghostbur!” Quackity growled as he pulled onto something against his neck. Upon closer look, they’re all wearing some kind of metallic collar around their neck.

The collar on Quackity beeps, a little circle flashing red before suddenly he convulses and falls onto the floor, groaning in pain. The others stepped away from the electrocuted hothead of the room. “What the fuck!” Jack Manifold exclaimed.

Music started playing, and Ghostbur started clapping his hands along with the music in an attempt to ease the tension and cheer everyone up. “C’mon everyone! Let’s calm down and play musical chairs!”

The others were looking at each other, Fundy having a blank yet annoyed expression as he stared at the ghost of his dad. They all turn to Tommy who begins clapping along, albeit much quieter and less enthusiastic, but still clapping as he walks around the seven chairs in the center of the room. Tubbo slowly follows along with a very hesitant Ranboo.

Soon, everyone was either clapping or just circling the chairs with the rest. They weren’t having fun like Ghostbur, but at least it calmed down for the most part. Quackity is the only one who decided to stand in the corner, not participating.

When the music stopped, everyone just sat down with no urgency, but that’s about to change in the next round right after they see what the penalty is when they lose. Quackity’s collar begins beeping and flashing red, getting louder and louder as he grips onto it in panic.

Everyone is frozen stiff when Quackity explodes into red marbles that scatter around the room. Then, almost everyone began screaming and cursing. Ghostbur tightly grips onto his sleeves, stressed at the noise and confused at what happened.

None of them notice the music playing again, only after when their collars started sounding in warning that they immediately went back into playing again, with one chair disappearing into a hidden trapdoor that opened and closed on the floor.

Throughout the rounds, the three loopers were keeping a close eye on Ghostbur to make sure that he had a chair.

Glattbur was the next person to die, as he stepped onto the blood marbles and fell, giving everyone time to get a chair before he could. Next is Ranboo as Fundy pushed him out of the way to take his chair. Then Tubbo as Punz took the chair away from under him and sat down himself.

With each death, Ghostbur has been breathing heavily despite not needing it. Blue stones are strewn around, adding contrast to the little red balls that covered the majority of the room’s floor.

Tommy glares at Punz as the music starts playing again. This is going to be tricky as Ghostbur is just standing by the wall.

Dream and Charlie watch the screen real closely for when Tommy discreetly moves his hands in a way to signal for them to stop the music. And there!

Tommy punches Punz in the face, fully focused on beating the crap out of him on the floor to give Ghostbur time to get a chair. Thankfully, he did, very numbly and slow as he sits hunched over while hugging himself. Tommy rushes towards his chair. The only ghost in the room fails to notice Tommy smiling at Punz as his body explodes into more red marbles.

Now, it’s just Tommy and Ghostbur. Time to morph that childish mind of his. The music plays again, this time much quieter as Tommy steps forward to rest his hands onto his shoulders. “Hey, you doing alright, Ghostbur?”

The ghost uneasily shakes his head ‘no’ as he looks around the red marbles and blues that littered the ground. “Th-they- they’re-”

“Safe, Ghostbur.” The ghost’s eyes snap to Tommy’s in hope. “God he’s so easy.” Tommy internally smirks at the thought.

“These marbles are just there to scare us. It’s almost Halloween after all!” He can practically see the way Ghostbur relaxes, fully trusting his word, no questions or doubt in mind. “We still have one more round. You’ll see us in the next game. Now you better hurry, because I’m gonna win this!” Tommy steps back to circle the only remaining chair left in the room, purposefully kicking marbles and stones out of the way in his path. Ghostbur grins at him, mimicking Tommy’s path as he pays close attention to when the music stops.

Tommy is the one that bursts into red marbles.

Dream gets up from his swivel chair to go into another room where the non-loopers respawned, no canon lives taken.  The Admin sheds his human appearance, instead now a being wearing layers of flowing cloaks with wings large and ever stretching. Two halos cross over each other to frame his completely white face that lacks any features except for a mouth that opens to a completely black void.

Exdee vanishes, leaving Charlie in the observation room, and accompanying the non-loopers to behave.

When Ghostbur comes back to the room where Friend is, the door behind him closes shut, now a white wall replacing it as a way of showing that it has been completed. One iron bar sinks into the floor, not that Ghostbur noticed at the moment.

He moves on to another door. “Hello, everyone!” He greets the same people he saw from the previous game. This time, hula-hoops were in this room.

Everyone seems to be in a daze except for Tommy, Tubbo, and Ranboo, who discreetly smile at Ghostbur as they pick a hoop up. Ghostbur does the same and patiently waits for everyone else to get a hoop before starting.

Tropical music begins playing and they’re all moving their waists to keep the hoop spinning, not wanting to be the first to lose after witnessing the horrors of Glatt suffering through Hell because of it. No, they don't want to die first. The loopers are the exception to the punishments of Exdee, obviously, but none of the non-loopers know that.

People expected Glatt to be the first to die, but no, he died third as there were no rules saying that they couldn't sabotage the others. The first and second were actually Punz and Quackity, Glatt purposefully slapping their hoops down. The further away they are from being first, the less pain they have to experience. Tommy was next, then Fundy, and Ranboo.

It’s now down to Tubbo, smiling alongside Ghostbur with a competitive grin on his face. “You tired yet?”

“Nope!” Tubbo pouts at him, and Ghostbur sticks his tongue out in retaliation. They go on for a minute and a half before Tubbo loses his groove and bursts into more red marbles. This time, the room has no shade of blue in sight. Just white and red.

When he gets back, Friend and the cage that held him were gone. Instead, a note is in its place. Ghostbur walks on over to it and crouches down.

“I’m away to eat grass. Brb! -Friend” The note reads, the ink used in a shade of blue. Obviously, the sheep would have not written that, but Ghostbur, the naive ghost, believed it and didn’t worry all that much as he went on to the next door.

The participants seem to have a haunted look in their eyes that they all try to hide when they hear the door opening. In the very back of the room, the only participants that didn’t look all that bothered are Tommy, Tubbo, and Ranboo.

With each new game, the loopers can see their eyes get duller and duller, resigned to their faith of having to play these twisted versions of old games they might have played when they were kids.

Ghostbur is too oblivious to know what’s going on, having too much fun playing and winning. Friend would pop up sometimes and then leave, but he grew used to it. Their sense of time seems to have been broken. A nice side-effect when they die is that they have not only their health restored, they also have their hunger restored as well, and with Ghostbur and Glatt being ghosts, Dream being an Admin, and Charlie being a full slime, nobody needed to eat anything.

The only ones that know what’s going on in the outside world are Charlie and Dream, the latter catching glimpses of the server as he chooses to watch over his family that seems to enjoy taking part in the death games.

People above were trying to find the missing individuals. Niki, at some point, stepped up to the plate and became the new president of L’Manberg, sometimes visiting the Cat Maid Cafe, acting as an accidental accomplice in luring more people for the hidden games.

Sure, the nation flourished, and they never forgot about the missing people, but that doesn’t mean the loopers will just let this timeline end in their deaths just because they’re not playing the big bag villains, no.

The others will be part of this. For now, they just need to make sure that Ghostbur is firmly in their make-believes and to properly break the ones they have trapped.

"Why did you just take out Friend? Wasn't the point of keeping him hostage so that kill him in front of Ghostbur when he loses at the last game?" Ranboo asks while all of the loopers sit in their own nest of pillows and blankets, a break in between the death games.

Dream shrugs, "Charlie wanted to see if we could do the death games up until the loop restarts again."

"How many other games does he know?"

"A lot. apparently."

"Can we have our own game suggestions?"

"Sure, I don't see why not."

Chapter Text

“Exdee!” George runs through the forest with a compass held tightly in his hand. Ever since the “truth” behind Dream’s cruel actions came to light, the colorblind man has been searching for Exdee with the compass provided by the god himself.

“I need your help! Exdee!” He continues to yell out, panting as he feels himself getting tired and tired, his body no longer able to run for long durations of time because of how frequently he sleeps. Despite this, he continues to dash and search for the god that could help his best friend from the clutches of the “dreamon”.

“EXDEE!”

“Yes, George?”

The man in question skids to a halt, almost tripping over his own feet upon hearing the god’s voice from the trees around him. He swivels around, trying to catch sight of Exdee.

“Where are you? I need your help!”

“With what, George?”

“It’s Dream! He’s being possessed by a dreamon or something. I need you to help Sapnap and the others to get rid of it!”

He receives silence as a reply.

“Exdee?”

…..

“Hello?” George's body tenses up as he hears light footsteps echoing behind him. “George?”

He quickly turns around. What greets him is a sight he didn’t believe he could see again. He sees a masked man in a bright green hoodie, casually standing beside a tree.

“Dream? Dream!”

Lifting his mask up to show himself smiling, he opens his arms out, catching George in a hug. The goggled man doesn’t appear to notice that Dream’s not breathing, nor does he notice that he’s cold, too focused on the fact that his best friend is here.

Pulling away from the embrace in favor of placing his hands firmly on his friend’s shoulders, George inspects him for any visible injuries. “Dream, are you okay?”

He is once again given silence as a reply. Then, “I won’t be in a few minutes.”

George pauses, watching “Dream'' completely take his mask off to reveal black veins around his eyes and red pupils. George may not be able to see the red, but he can very clearly see the veins, immediately recognizing them as a sign of a dreamon possession. He quickly gets away, drawing out a diamond sword as he increases the distance between him and his “possessed” friend.

“George, why are you backing up? It’s me, Dream!” The impostor using his friend’s body steps forward, arms open for another hug. George takes a step back with each step forward the impostor took.

“No you’re not, you’re the dreamon. You’re the one that ruined the server!”

“Ouch, Gogy-”

“Don’t call me that!”

George’s back hit a tree, sword still pointing at Dream. Thankfully, the impostor stops, arms dropping to his sides, smile nowhere to be seen.

“There was no dreamon, George.”

“There is! You can’t trick me that easily.”

“Alright, fine. Take out the compass that I gave you. Where is it pointing to?”

George quickly pulls his compass out from his hotbar, not daring to lower the sword in his hand. A quick glance down at the metal device shows that the arrow is pointing directly at Dream. Shock abruptly enters his body, causing him to freeze in place as he stares at the compass with wide eyes. He lifts his head to look at the man in front of him.

“E-exdee?”

Dream watches George’s face morph from shock to anger, to confusion, to denial, then finally, to betrayal as realization dawns on him.

“It was you who's been messing with everyone?”

“Yes, and no.”

“No? What do you mean ‘no’?!”

Dream was killed by Tubbo using magic.

Darkness creeps in from the distance, closing in on them and obscuring the sight of their surroundings until all they can see is the tree behind George, the grass by their feet, and each other.

“They lied, George. There was no dreamon. Wake up.”

Dream steps into the darkness around them.

“Everyone else is already awake. It’s just you and me here.”

Techno points his crossbow at the purple-eyed Ranboo as he passively raises his hands up in mock surrender. “Let us in, Ranboo.”

Delight lights up in Ranboo’s eyes as his smile somehow stretches even wider. He steps to the side and waves a hand at the obsidian and crying obsidian wall. The center of the wall starts producing purple particles similar to an enderman’s. The particles widen as it opens a portal until eventually, it's big enough for them to step through.

“There we go,” Ranboo turns back to the rest of the server’s inhabitants, seeing them make no move to come close. Techno switches his crossbow for a netherite sword, pointing the blade to the enderman hybrid’s chest. “You go in first.”

“Of course!” Ranboo, without an ounce of fear or hesitation that the people would commonly associate him with, practically skips into the portal with a cautious and bewildered Techno close behind. Phil waits for the rest of the people to enter before stepping in himself.

What greets them is a disturbingly beautiful sight.

Instead of oppressing black walls and hallways lined with empty cells, they see an open area with pillars holding the roof. The central area of the open space is an indoor field of flowers that are being watered with a red liquid by Charlie, who takes the form of a shapeless mass of sludge. The roof adjacent to the garden is filled with two colors of stained glass in a swirling pattern, letting natural light enter in hues of red and purple.

They, however, paid attention to none of these as Ranboo steps forward to the throne on top of a platform. Slumping against the throne, blood dripping and flowers blooming from the cuts of his wounds, mainly located on his wrists, neck, and head, is a maskless Dream with his head bowed down, a corpse tied to the throne by the very flowers that grow from his body. A grotesque yet captivating altar for all to see.

If the sight wasn't enough to make them gag, the smell all around the transformed prison would. Techno easily identifies the metallic smell to be blood as he stares at the red-stained flowers all around the garden.

Standing in front of the corpse’s raised platform, from left to right, Tommy, Tubbo, and Wilbur face the newcomers with wide smiles that give them anything but the comforting feeling of being welcomed. Ranboo joins them, standing beside Tommy, his smile and unblinking eyes unchanging.

“Welcome to the Obsidian Temple, guys! How were your dreams?” Tubbo’s eyes are completely black with an iridescent purple-blue sheen, reminding them of light hitting the eyes of an insect.

Horrified silence washed over the crowd. Techno is the one that steps forward, his grip on the sword in his hand slightly shaking as he glares at the people before him. “What did you do, Tubbo? I thought you wanted to get rid of the dreamon.”

“There was no dreamon.” A new voice says from the temple's entrance. Everyone turns their back to see the disheveled figure of George as he huffs for air, seemingly to have run all the way from Kinoko Kingdom to the prison. “They tricked us into combining Dream’s soul with the Egg in exchange for power. They made us fall asleep and dream of what we wanted to see happen. They’ve been planning this from the start.”

"George, how do you know?" Asked Eret in suspicion.

"Dream told me in the dream world before I woke up."

Tommy scowls at the colorblind man, his pupilless pale blue-green eyes narrowing into a glare, “Of course Dream is the one to fucking tell you. Oh well, we’re already done.”

Phil steps to Techno’s side when he sees Wilbur approaching, a sword of his own in his hands as his wings puff out to appear larger. “Phil! I’m so glad to see you again.”

“Stay back, Wil.” His revived son stops between the distance of Phil and the altar. The pupils of Wilbur flash into a vibrant shade of red before dimming back into a dark shade of brown. “You’re with them." The avian states, causing Wilbur's grin to grow bigger. "Why do this? Why do this to Dream if you saw him as your hero?”

“To be closer to him!” Wilbur wraps his arms around himself as if proving his point, his eyes flashing red once more as they widen, looking crazed by the minute. “I saw what the Warden and Quackity did, and we freed him! We’re one of him now, his disciples! You should join Phil, Techno. He would be very happy to have you with him.”

A shriek erupts from the crowd as all eyes snap towards the flailing form of Fundy suspended into the air by a swarm of bees.

People with crossbows aimed at the swarm, yet are hesitant to shoot the bees away with how much Fundy is moving, only being able to watch as the cloud of buzzing insects take the anthropomorphic fox to the foot of the morbidly beautiful display of Dream in his bloody glory where they just noticed that Tommy and Ranboo have stepped forward to flank Wilbur’s sides while Tubbo is nowhere to be seen.

The swarm of bees abruptly drops Fundy onto his knees, then flies to his side where they begin flying into a shape that vaguely looks like the silhouette of a person. They begin flying tighter and tighter, compressing into each other until eventually, Tubbo fades in with his back turned to the crowd. He kneels down next to Fundy and leans into his ear, presumably whispering to the distraught fox.

“Get him on our side, Tubbo! We’ll get them off of you!” Was the only warning the crowd got as the three cultists jumped into action. Wilbur, despite having little experience on the battlefield compared to everyone else on the server, is a hard and unpredictable target to hit as he dashed forward with fire covering his hands. Each sudden stop or transfer of energy such as when his fist hits the air or when his feet pound against the floor, an influx of fire explodes out as he aims for his own father, slowly burning away at the black feathers while ignoring his own cuts and bruises that he continues to receive from Phil, all with a sharp smile on his face.

Ranboo is after Techno, teleporting around, using his portals, and creating purple duplicates of himself with the endeman particles that mostly circles him, further hindering Techno’s vision as he struggles to keep his opponent back while having to keep his focus from the confused and loud voices in his head.

Tommy went after everyone else, and he is by far the most chaotic of the bunch. He zipped around with strong gusts of wind swirling at his command. People tripped, swords were sent flying, arrows redirected to hit an ally. It was a painful fight for those who were close to Dream as Tommy’s movements mimicked his down to the way he charged at them with excitement and no fear in his turquoise eyes. The smiley mask that covers half of his face does nothing but make the pain worse.

The mercenary brothers, Purpled and Punz, both looked at each other with a nod upon seeing an opening that leads directly to the altar where Fundy now kneels directly in front of Dream’s feet with Tubbo standing over him at his side. The two weave and rush through the battlefield when they are suddenly tackled away by two bodies they have failed to notice.

They skid against the plants of the temple’s indoor garden, the blood that stained the plants now clung to their armor and clothes, blood that they call assumed belongs to Dream. Standing over them are Sam and Quackity, or that’s what it looks to be. The pair seems to be covered in a thick sludge of greenish-brown that twitched, causing their bodies to move against their will. Sam sounds to be choking while Quackity stays completely silent.

Purpled covers his mouth and nose with a hand, gagging at the stench of decay coming from Quackity. Punz immediately gets up to stand ground at the two.”Go after Tubbo!”

Purpled quickly gets up, picking his sword that fell on the ground as he charges at the altar. He sees Fundy's head being held back by Tubbo while he forces him to drink a thick dark liquid from a golden chalice, still whispering his words for the fox to hear. Tears slowly push their way out of the fox's eyes as he struggles to drink the liquid, or perhaps it's by the strong grip Tubbo has on the back of his head to make sure he downs the gold cup's contents.

The young mercenary swings his sword to strike at the ram hybrid when suddenly, a body of the thick sludge that’s similar to the ones on Sam and Quackity came and took the blade in its mass. Purpled startles back as he tries to pull his sword out but the sludge refuses, instead, it pulls the sword in and moves forward to take Purpled with it.

A call for help causes Punz to look behind him to see Purpled being swallowed by the sludge. His moment of distraction costs him dearly as the puppeteered Sam and the decaying corpse of Quackity pin him down to watch the sludge completely consume his younger brother into its body, the dark color of it and the poor lighting making it hard to see what's going on as it moves in place, the shadowed struggle of Purpled growing slow and sluggish until finally, he stops.

The thick slime spits Purpled out, who lays lifeless on the floor. The weight on Punz’s back is removed and he immediately runs to his brother, rolling him to his side to see his eyes closed, body covered in the sticky slime. “Pu-purpled?”

The body of his brother did not respond immediately. It opened its eyes and gave Punz a smile that sent a chill down his body. “Not here, at the moment.” A new voice croaks from Purpled’s body.

Sapnap’s tears evaporated at the heat of his own flames as his axe arched down onto Tommy. The teen moves out of the way with inhumane speed and counters his attack with an upward thrust of his own sword.

Pain bloomed on the blaze hybrid’s chest as blood gushed out from the hit. He quickly backs up, coughing into his hand while he lets other people charge at the teen wearing a cracked porcelain mask.

Despite his injuries, the only thing he focuses on is his burning rage at Tommy and the others for tricking everyone into using Dream as a power source for their own benefit. A glance at the body on the altar only fan the flames inside him as he catches a very faded figure of his childhood friend, almost like a ghost, standing in front of his own body and reaching out to him in a silent plea for help. He blinks, and the figure is gone.

George is by his side as he checks over at his remaining best friend, “Sapnap, you need to stop! You’re injured.”

“Yeah, Snapmap, you should stop! Maybe even join us, you’ll get to see your Dream again!” Tommy calls out as he harshly pushes Bad away with a kick to the chest, his wild winds blowing the demon back and into Niki who stood a distance behind him with her crossbow.

Sapnap grits his teeth in frustration, still being held by George to stay back as he reaches for a healing potion in his inventory. A growl escapes him as he generates a fireball in his fist. He throws it at Tommy, who simply redirects its trajectory at Puffy and Eret, the latter barely managing to block it with his shield.

“You hated Dream, didn’t you? He took so much to gain power. Why not take his for your own? You can do so much better than these pathetic fireballs of yours.”

 Sapnap lifts his axe up, pushing George away as he charges at the teen again, sparks of fire trailing behind as his rage finally spills out. Tommy just grins as he stands his ground.

“Your loss.”

Philza has grown more and more desperate in his battle to stop his once dead son from doing what he is doing. He carelessly used his wings to block the explosive blows of Wilbur’s attacks as he backed himself up against a wall. Tears flow freely from his eyes at the sight of Wilbur, now lost yet again to the all-consuming madness.

Another chance of redeeming himself as a father, another chance taken from him.

The sounds of the world muffle in his ears, now just the two of them, staring at each other. Nothing happens for a good chunk of time, just a father and son watching over the other as they stand on different sides of the conflict. Then comes an orange blur that walks to Wilbur’s side, eyes completely red with slitted pupils with blood dripping from his smile.

Phil’s eyes widened in devastation once he realized that it was Fundy, now in a similar state as Wilbur. They do nothing but watch the avian take uneven breaths at the sight of them, saying nothing to persuade him into joining them.

They both quickly jump away when Techno charges at them, smiles frozen on their expressions as the pink-haired man points his sword at them to keep distance between them. “We need to go, Phil. We’re severely underprepared.”

When no movement was heard from the avian, Techno grabbed hold of his arm and drags him to the exit, where Ranboo’s portal that led them here is strangely left open, but they don’t question it as they all flee, leaving the cultists with their chained god in the temple.

Purpled and Fundy were the only ones that were left behind, now additions to the growing cult of the temple.

Charlie controls the sludge on Sam, Purpled, and the dead body of Quackity to walk back into their shared cell built somewhere within the temple while Ranboo tells Wilbur and Fundy to patrol for any intruders.

Once the non-loopers are gone, Tubbo dissipates into a swarm of bees, reforming in front of Dream’s corpse with a generous space between them. “Hey, Dream? Can you hear us?”

The spectral form of Dream in his prison jumpsuit materializes in front of his preserved body. “Yup. Didn’t think you guys would hold back against them.”

“Of course we would hold back. It’s not fun if we just kill them.” Tommy crosses his arms with a huff. Dream merely shrugs with an amused huff, “Fair enough.”

“You think they’d be back?” Ranboo says as he teleports himself to sit by the altar’s edge. Charlie slides on over to the other side of the altar where he rests as a pile of thick slime as he answers Ranboo's question, “I can see that they’re shaken up, but are still determined to stop us and fix everything. So yes, most probably.”

“Off-topic, how about we get Phil on our side? We can convince him through Wilbur and Fundy.” Tubbo suggests as he moves to sit on the altar and lean against the legs of Dream's corpse.

“We can try. How about Punz?” Ranboo chimes in as he opens a little portal to peek through and spy on the grieving mercenary that's sitting in a fetal position in the corner of a room filled with destroyed items, most likely somewhere in his house.

“We scam him in a trade for his life and Purpled’s.” Charlie cheerfully proposes as his formless pile of sludge of a body bounces up.

"That could work. Do you need me trapping any of them in their dreams?" Asks Dream as he aimlessly floats around the garden, spotting one plant sprouting out and continuing to grow at a rapid pace. The stem produces a bud that then blooms into an oxeye daisy, the entire flower having a hue of red because of his blood that's been mixed into the water used to water the dirt. The red hue seems to intensify under the light that passes through the red and purple stained glass roof above them.

"No! You're just going to slow the action down!" Tommy exclaimed at the faint ghost of Dream. "Just make sure that the temple's blocks are indestructible and appear in front of them every once in a while to really get them all crying'n shit."

"And appear in front of our other cult members as promised of being closer with you." Ranboo reminds him, his hand cupping his mouth to carry his voice across the distance between him and the specter.

Dream lets out a breathy laugh and nods, later disappearing to fulfill his parts of the plan.

Chapter Text

When starting a new loop, it’s not like waking up to a new place after dissociating. Their memories and their personalities combine with their current loop selves, both of which can clash against one another and leave them confused and in a daze as they sort out their heads. In the first few loops, it was overwhelming, but with time and practice, they’ve grown used to it, so much so that now they can just pop into a new loop mid-action and not break away from their new roles.

Overall, it was a particularly unpleasant experience.

After the introduction of the Storybook, however, those unpleasant experiences return as new variations of the server are made, especially if their non-looper selves have instincts that have a concept of family. Why is that a problem?

Well, said instincts will process the new memories being shoved into their brains before the loopers could have a chance at doing that themselves, afterwards it’ll register that the other loopers are family, and then finally realize that said family is nowhere to be found.

Which subsequently causes the instincts to go on overdrive and panic as it tries to figure out where the family is. That is the situation that the loopers find themselves in.

Tommy bursts out of a set of doors and immediately jumps off the floating island in the sky, using his wings to glide down while looking this way and that in search of his family of loopers. His avian instincts were screaming at him to find his flock, his true time-looping flock, not the non-loopers that his current loop self sees as family.

The avian can see Ranboo sprinting and teleporting over to where Tommy is, cape theatrically flowing in the wind behind him like the dramatic spoiled brat of a prince his character is. They are seriously going to need to come up with a lie for their strange behavior if someone spotted them, and fast.

Once Tommy lands, Ranboo appears right in front of him with his hands firmly on the avian’s shoulders. “You know where Tubbo is, right? You guys are always together!”

Tommy shakes his head, frustration slowly growing within him while simultaneously making room for panic in his chest. “No, I fuckin’ don’t! How about you with Dream?”

Ranboo lets out a growl of frustration as he, too, shakes his head 'no'. Tommy grips onto Ranboo’s forearms, trying his best to control his unfamiliar instincts. He can tell that Ranboo is doing the same with the way his grip tightens on his shoulders. They both take several deep breaths, trying to calm down.

“Tommy! Ranboo!” A voice calls from the skies. Tommy’s wings spread out to appear bigger while Ranboo quickly turns to the sounds of feet hitting the ground, bi-colored eyes glowing dangerously as he bares his fangs and claws at the newcomer.

Philza puffs his wings out in surprise at the displays of aggression. He quickly closes his wings, trying to be as small and nonthreatening as possible when he hears Ranboo give a warning growl at him. Showing his open hands to them, he keeps his voice low when he speaks, “It’s just me. I’m not here to hurt you.”

It took a minute of Phil talking for them to finally settle down. Tommy and Ranboo cling to each other’s side as they watch the elytrian slowly step forward, his hands still up in mock surrender. “Are you two alright? What happened?”

That gives them an excuse to quickly go through their memories.

Tommy’s been aimlessly traveling when he stumbled upon Phil who goes by the title Crow Father, which is how he came across this little community of hybrids and nonhumans.

Ranboo is of royal blood in the End dimension, and the kingdom where he came from is not particularly kind as from what he can remember, there’s a firm line between royals and peasants. He woke up in the Overworld in his need to explore and now is trying to create a link between the Overworld and the End.

They both never disclosed their pasts, and they’ve been busy going away from the community to do mining and such, which is a great opportunity for them to start twisting this loop in their favor. Usually, in these cases, Ranboo is the one to take the lead, but with how their loop’s selves acted before they appeared, the enderian lets Tommy fabricate their story.

The prince turns to Tommy with a glare and another shake of his head, but Tommy knows what he meant. To Phil, it just looks like they were having a silent argument. The elytrian is not one to barge into the private matters of others, but if it causes such a show of distress, he can’t help but worry and try to encourage them to console him or Schlatt, aka Father Fragrance.

Tommy breaks eye contact with Ranboo and looks at the grass below him as his wings lower down. “We..” Ranboo crosses his arms with a glare directed to the side, aimed at nothing in particular. “We’re looking for our flock. We got separated by them before arriving he-” The avian lets out a squawk of surprise when Ranboo lightly smacks the back of his head. “Kindred, Thomas!”

“Hey! It’s the same thing-!”

“I refuse to be addressed as such-”

“Flock and kindred are literally just-”

“I am not a mere bird, Thomathy-!”

“Two ways of saying family!”

“I am royalty, mind you!”

“Okay, okay, let’s settle down for a bit.” Phil closes the gap between himself and the two arguing friends- family?- and places a calming hand on each of their shoulders. “How about we go up to my house and we can continue this, alright?”

The two glared at each other, although there wasn't any heat into it. Tommy’s eyes shone as a layer of unshed tears begin to cloud his vision whilst Ranboo has this look of hidden longing. Phil’s brows furrowed in increased concern as he lightly guides them to the ladder up to his floating island.

Meanwhile, in a forest closest to the community, Tubbo flies around the forest, calling out the names of his family- his hive members- as he frantically searches for any signs of them, mainly trying to find Charlie as he’s usually the one that knows where the rest are.

He lets out little buzzes of distress when morning becomes noon with no sign of anyone, not even a non-looper. Just as he was about to go into a full-blown panic, the sounds of light fluttering wings and the wet sounds of footsteps hitting dirt caused him to stop and whip his head around.

Out of the bushes came Charlie, a full slime humanoid. Tubbo immediately runs to him with his arms wide open. The slimecican took initiative and caught the bumblebee in his arms. “Hello, Tubbo! We were looking for you!”

“We?” Tubbo pulls away to look at Charlie, then he notices a familiar unmasked face behind slimecican. “DREAM!” Charlie lets Tubbo go and the teen immediately launches himself at the man, his transparent bee wings ecstatically fluttering behind him.

“Hey, Tubs. You’re a bumblebee.” Dream comments as he pats his fellow insectoid’s lower back, being careful to not touch the flapping wings. Tubbo lets out a wet chuckle as he begrudgingly steps away from the hug. He looks at Dream up and down, “And you’re orange!”

The formerly green-wearing unmasked man looks down at himself. He’s wearing some fancy orange suit with baggy sleeves, the cuffs ending as gloves that cover his hand and leave his fingers and thumb exposed to reveal black freckles dusting his knuckles, the suit’s tail long and open, the design of which is reminiscent to a dress and a butterfly’s lower body. His entire attire is accented with intricate black embroidery and trimmings.

Dream looks back up at Tubbo, deadpanned, “Is that all you noticed about me?” He stretches his wings that match his entire attire. “You’re a monarch butterfly!” Tubbo immediately says right after seeing his giant orange butterfly wings.

“Yup, I am.” The butterfly says with a smirk. The fact that he doesn't wear a mask in this loop further intrigues him. "C'mon, let's go find Tommy and Ranboo. I have an idea." He would rather not spoil what he can do, after all, it can be discovered later once they've seen what else this loop has in store for them.

Phil left the mildly distressed avian and enderian in the Church of Fragrance where hopeful Schlatt can keep them calm and in good company while he soars through the skies to look for three missing family members of Tommy and Ranboo, and potential community members who go by the names Tubbo, Charlie, and Dream.

He doesn’t know what he’s looking for as Tommy and Ranboo (mostly Tommy) admitted that they don’t remember what their family looked like as they ran into a group of witches, which caused them to wake up separated and with gaps in their memory. “No wonder they were in such a panic,” Thought Phil, feeling bad for the two as he looks down at the forest where he first met them.

Surely they haven’t traveled that far. Tommy and Ranboo have been staying for a week, and the forest isn’t all that big, just small enough for him to fly over it in just less than a day.

He is proven right when he sees two insect-based humanoids, one of them carrying an all-green human figure in a bridal carry, all three of which have their backs turned to him. “Could it be them?”

Phil slows his acceleration as he nears the flying trio, purposefully flapping his wings harder than necessary to alert them of his presence. It seems to have done the trick as the two flying insectoids turn to face the elytrian. “Excuse me, but are you by chance Tubbo, Charlie, and Dream?”

The three glances at each other, Phil patiently waits for them to answer with a reassuring smile. Then they all turn to him, the monarch butterfly hybrid being the one who speaks for them all, “Yes, we are. And you are?”

“I’m Philza, but please do call me Phil. I live in a small community with an avian and an enderian who go by the names, Tommy and Ranboo. They’re looking for you.”

They glance at each other once more before Dream turns back to Phil with a nod, “Take us there.”

And he does, although that remains unknown to Tommy, who can only hope that Phil comes back quickly because he does not want to listen to more of Schlatt's stories in a white church that favors the scent of wood. He has yet to figure out how an arachnid with the ability to mimic scents can create a church.

“See, I had a fondness with scents and would often collect scratch-and-sniff books in my youth-”

Tommy sits on a bench, pretending to be attentively listening to Schlatt’s tale of how he discovered his ability to manipulate his pheromones into smelling certain fragrances.

Ranboo is by his side, leaning against the bench’s backrest as he leisurely reads a book that he brought with him. Tommy can very much tell that the enderian is enjoying his new role of being a bitch.

They have calmed down thanks to the priest, but now they aren’t entirely sure what else to do other than wait and familiarize not only their own characters, but the characters of others as well.

Schlatt, in Tommy’s opinion, is very calming to be around, yet somehow creepy at the same time compared to his“alcoholic ram hybrid” get-up that he usually plays by. And can you blame him? Despite being in flowing robes that is barely touching the floor, it doesn’t hide the fact that he has spider legs coming out from the bottom of his clothes that he uses to walk around rather than use his normal human ones, and there’s the other fact that he has these weird appendages at the sides of his mouth that kinda blends in with his mutton chops beard that sometimes twitches and moves, and don't even get him started with his extremely sharp and pointed nails that can very easily cut flesh with little to no pressure. Schlatt had noticed Tommy gazing at his hands and tried to distract him (as if Schlatt was worried that he's scaring Tommy-fucking-Innit with the mere sight of them) by showing the paw pads on his fingers because apparently arachnids have those since when the fuck-

Tommy’s trail of thought cuts off when one of the giant church entrance doors opens. Entering are three very familiar flock members that didn’t have enough time to react when Tommy practically barrels into them for a hug. Ranboo just teleports to the group and joins in on the sudden group hug. Phil enters from the other door and fondly smiles at the five. The elytrian can see that Schlatt is gazing at them the same way.

The arachnid signals for Phil to follow him to give the five some private space, and he nods in understanding as he quietly goes after him into another room of the church.

They continue to hold each other close in comfortable silence, and then, Tommy is the one that breaks it with a whisper.

“We need a fucking base ‘cause I getting exhausted staying in character.” And the rest agreed, but they couldn't do it right away as Phil, the community's father figure alongside Schlatt, ushered them up into his house up on the floating island and told them to rest for the day, and they did. In one room. As a single pile with Dream and Tubbo on top as their wings are a lot more delicate compared to other wings.

The next day is when they finally start moving by splitting into two teams. Ranboo, Tommy, and Dream are in charge of gathering materials while Tubbo and Charlie meet the rest of the community. So far, this loop has been very fascinating to the, more so of the fact that there are new faces such as an inchling named Sneegs, and a starborne named Scott, although they have noticed that are lacking a few familiar faces, such as Sam and Quackity, much to the looper’s disappointment.

Oh well, they can have fun without them, but in the next loop, they promise to go even harsher on them for missing out.

The community overall is a fairly new one, having very few buildings, many plans to be made, and construction going underway, including the pub that this loop’s Tommy planned to create with Jack Manifold.

Fortunately, news spreads fast and everyone seems very understanding of the loopers wanting to be together and do builds for themselves, so Jack lets Tommy be and does most of the building work with Phil.

As of now, they had no idea what they wanted as a base, and they were figuring out how to hide it as Wilbur, the phantom shit, loves sneaking into people’s houses, same could be said with Sneeg as he is an inchling. There’s also Phil who likes to check on them, mainly on Dream, Tubbo, and Charlie to see how they’ve been settling in with the rest of the community.

Being villains in this loop might be tricky, but they like a challenge.

Every day is a day of harmless chaos for the community with little conflict so far. Sure there was the problem with Fundy stealing from everyone, but it seems to have been resolved so far, or, well, at least that’s what Wilbur thinks.

The phantom hybrid takes a leisurely walk down the path that leads to Niki’s pond where he’ll meet the only merling of the community to idly chat about whatever comes to mind. When he arrives at the pond, however, he is met with Tommy talking to Niki with his wings frantically flapping up and down and his arms waving about.

Wilbur speeds his pace up, wondering what’s happening, “-and I don’t know what to do or how to make one for a butterfly and neither does Tubbo-”

“O-okay, Tommy. Deep breaths, it’s going to be alright.” Niki gently waves her hands in front of her, giving the avian a comforting smile. "No, it's not going to be alright!"

“What’s going on?” Wilbur asks as he slides to Tommy’s side while placing a calming hand on the avian’s shoulder.

“Dream- the butterfly hybrid- he’s been- he doesn’t-”

“Settle down, Crowboy.” Wilbur squeezes his shoulder as comfort. “What happened with Dream?”

Tommy very visibly takes large and deep breaths in and out before he starts talking again. “He’s trying to stop himself from hibernating.”

That is quite a surprise for them. “How can he even hibernate in the first place?” Wilbur voices both his and Niki’s confusion. Tommy’s wings puff out defensively as he yells, “He’s been through shit and his body is all fucked, okay!?”

“I didn’t mean it like it was a bad thing!” Wilbur steps back with his hands and scaly wings raised up. “I just- it’s spring and all so I was just curious as to why a butterfly would hibernate at this time of the year!” The phantom quickly explained at seeing Tommy’s hard glare.

The avian lets out a harsh huff as he crosses his arms while rapidly tapping his feet. “As I was asking Niki here before you barged in, I have no idea how to make a nest for butterflies, and even if I did, I don’t remember. You know anybody who can?”

“U-uh…” Is all Wilbur says as he goes through a mental checklist of people in the community to see if anybody knew how to make butterfly-specific "nests". He has no definitive answer, but if he has to guess someone who might have that knowledge, it would be- “Phil. He might know since he’s been around the longest.”

“Father Fragrance might know as well. He is another insectoid, after all.” Suggested Niki as she sways her axolotl tail from side to side in thought.

And so, unable to decide who to go for first, Wilbur headed on over to Schlatt and Niki swam up the waterfall at the side of the floating island to meet up with Phil (and also pick up some items while she's there).

In the shadows, Ranboo is nonchalantly watching from a distance with Charlie right beside him. Everything seems to be going smoothly so far at the start of their plans. The slimecican hands Ranboo a little slime version of himself before the enderian leaves Charlie alone to casually walk down into his cave and into his Nether portal. He is transported up on the roof of the Nether where another portal far away from his current one innocently waits for the End prince’s arrival and transports him to the strongholds where Tubbo and Dream are currently hiding.

Because they want to be as convincing as possible for their plans, especially around the attentive eyes of the two “fathers” of the community, Tubbo has been helping Dream make scars around his body while they come up with other little plans for the server.

Ranboo steps out of the Nether portal and besides the End portal’s ambient sounds, he can hear grunts and hisses from a certain butterfly hybrid as he walks down the halls of the stronghold with potions and food in his inventory.

Upon entering Dream’s makeshift torture room, the stench of blood and vomit greets Ranboo, along with the sight of Tubbo rubbing the butterfly’s bareback.

“Woah, Tubbo. You really went overboard there.” The prince comments as he scans Dream’s shirtless torso. Cuts, both minor scratches and deep scars, littered his body alongside purple bruises, especially around his stomach. “I didn’t know! Dream’s being a masochist here-”

“It wouldn’t look realistic otherwise!”

“-and didn’t say the safeword!”

Ranboo takes a deep breath in through his nose, then out of his mouth as he rubs a hand up to his face and into his hair, slightly pushing his crown back and balancing it on his head, the yellow accessory that tells people of his status as royalty now dangerously close to falling off.

"Tommy will be very angry at you, Dream," Stated the little cube of slime on Ranboo's shoulder. "You know what that means."

Ranboo looks down at the confused man with an unimpressed expression. “We’re leaving you with Tommy.”

“Wait, guys, no-”

“Nope, we’re locking you here until you either start using the safeword, or you go deaf,” Tubbo says as he rapidly types on his communicator.

Because it is believed by the community that Dream is nearing his hibernation after having been forcefully be kept awake and tortured because of a past that the looper’s refuse to discuss due to it being a “sensitive topic” and that “it wasn’t their place to share”, Scott was the only one allowed into their fake base for the time being, which is literally just another part of Ranboo’s cave that he dug out for everyone, including Tommy as he decided to move in with him.

Why Scott and not Wilbur as the first victim to fall onto their side? Well, Scott is the most trustworthy person on the server, and he originated from space. Just because someone originated from the galaxy above, that doesn’t mean they’re exposed to everything the universe has to offer, which makes it easier to do what they plot to do.

Any suspicions were nonexistent, they made sure of it during their little meeting at the break of dawn in the Church of Fragrance.

Why was everyone worried about Dream? As stated before, word spreads fast and they took that to their advantage by placing hints here and there that the "fragile" butterfly is suffering from trauma for the past days before and after they arrived at the community.

They are so grateful that everyone cares, truly, they are, so much so that they arranged to turn this peaceful community into a community of conflict and distrust, with them being the pitied ones. Now, doesn’t that sound just absolutely wonderful? Having the non-loopers do most of the work at bringing this land into Hell while they rest to take care of their "sick" family? Because it certainly sounds like a vacation to them.

“Sorry, Jack Manifold, but Dream would be reminded of fire and lava if he sees you,” Tommy grumbles as he glares at the floor. What he says next comes out as a whisper under his breath, but he can tell that Fundy, who sat at the front row with Jack, and Phil, who’s standing behind the loopers at the front of the church as emotional support, heard him due to their eyes widening in alarm. “The people used those on him.”

“No can do, Wilbur. You’re a nice guy, but I don’t think he’d feel safe around someone who can phase through walls and go invisible. It would remind him too much of those who wouldn’t let him sleep.” Tubbo rubs his arm and looks away, looking as if he’s nervous, but he caught a glimpse of the mentioned phantom’s face going just a shade paler, if that’s even possible.

“Obviously, Schlatt, Phil, and Fundy can’t go. Dream feels too vulnerable to have to face people who happen to be the same species as those who hurt him.” Ranboo rudely scoffs at Charlie as he delicately crosses his hands over his chest, his chin held up high as he looks away from Charlie, as if offended by him for ever thinking of suggesting the three mentioned. Horror makes its way into the elytrian, arachnid, and fox’s bodies. Phil’s wings pull themselves closer to his back to unconsciously appear smaller, Schlatt’s spider legs seem to have stiffened stock still, and Fundy’s tail drops to the empty space beside the bench he’s currently sitting on with his ears folded against his head.

“You’re good, Niki, but I don’t think Ranboo would appreciate it if you dug a hole for you to get to Dream. Plus, he’s already a bit hesitant to be around water. He’s been bound to the ground for so long because they kept soaking his wings.” Tubbo’s own wings twitched behind him as he slightly cringed at his own statement. Niki just gives an understanding nod with a smile, yet her eyes show glints of concern.

“I don’t think Sneeg is a good idea either. We wouldn’t want to remind him of an old friend he was forced to watch….you know.” Charlie suddenly goes limp, losing his humanoid form and falls into a lump of slime with his tongue sticking out, a not-at-all subtle hint as to what happened to Dream’s mysterious friend that definitely doesn’t parallel to Tommy killing a cat in prison in the first timeline. Sneeg can only grumble as he clenched his fists, silently fuming from his spot beside Scott who’s increasingly getting uncomfortable as he listens to more clues as to what happened in the past.

Clues into their edited story of what happened to Dream in Pandora's Vault.

Then, Scott raises his hand up, causing all attention to be on him. “How about me?” He asks and is greeted by the judging looks of the loopers, who look at him up and down before turning to each other to murmur and whisper, except for Charlie as he is still on the floor as a pile of goop, staring at the starborne. Or at least that's what Scott thinks Charlie is doing since he can't really see his eyes, only his glasses that are floating in his formless slime body, which is pointed at his general direction.

The family of Dream all turn to Scott at the same time, and Ranboo is the one to speak for all four of them. “You will do. Phil, inform him in creating a hibernation chamber for Dream. Once you are ready, meet me at my cave.”

And that is where Scott finds himself. He was told that he didn’t need to bring anything as the materials are all provided and the space needed for the hibernation chamber had been set in the time when Scott spoke with Phil, but he couldn’t help himself and decided to bring a few blankets in his inventory as he wasn’t sure what Dream liked.

Scott was thankfully not too lost in his thought as he narrowly avoids smacking into the back of the tall End prince that suddenly stopped walking. Ranboo turns around and looks down at the starborne with half-lidded eyes, distrust and judgment clear in his bi-colored irises.

“Your building space is over there,” He points down a corridor where other doors, that presumably lead to bedrooms, are lined up. At the very end is a singular door that’s surrounded with nether bricks. “And Dream is currently resting here,” Ranboo gestures for the door behind him with a hand and a tilt of his head. He turns back to Scott with his piercing gaze. “Handle him with care. Have I made myself clear, peasant?”

Scott nods as he clenches his hands into fists, then relaxes them, repeating the same motion to calm himself. Ranboo looks him up and down one last time before nodding to himself and stepping to the side. “You may go in.”

With a deep breath, he slowly twists the knob and slowly opens the door, the hinges giving a small squeak in protest as he quietly steps into the room. He can very clearly see that there was an attempt at creating a temporary hibernation space from the cave’s inhabitants and see who did what.

The pile of blankets and pillows in the form of a nest is clearly by Tommy. The nest itself seems to be in a hole dug into the ground, probably Charlie as he has a thing with holes, that or that’s just a slimecican thing. The room itself is dark with some glowberries hanging from vines on the ceiling acting as mood light, Ranboo’s contribution most likely. There also seem to be two baskets full of flowers and fruits, which Scott can guess came from Tubbo as he saw him carrying those baskets earlier in the day.

In the middle of the nest, laying on his stomach as he struggles to either stay awake or fall asleep, a vulnerable orange butterfly hybrid in an oversized red sweater shuffles around in an attempt to get himself as comfortable as he can. From what little skin Scott can see on his shoulders, there were far too many scars on just one small area. He hadn’t doubted what the family of hybrids was saying about Dream’s past, but to actually see evidence of it? Scott couldn’t help but shiver at the thought of what other horrors Dream might have experienced before being found by the Crowfather.

“U-uh, hello? Are you Dream?” Green eyes flicked up at him, the butterfly’s body freezing in place as he stares up at the new face in his room. He hesitantly nods up at Scott. Shakily, Dream tries to stand up, having his legs in particular beaten by Tommy before the community church meeting started.

Scott flinches forward to help balance Dream up, his hands slightly pushing him down by the shoulders, “Woah there, just lay back down.” The injured insectoid held onto Scott’s wrists as he slowly spread his wings out for him to view. The starborne looks at them in confusion, seeing minuscule scratches at the edges of his black-speckled orange wings.

“What are you doing? Do your wings hurt?” Scott asked, not taking his eyes off of the wings as he continued to scan them. Dream begins to flutter them back and forth in a slow and deliberate manner. He can see Scott’s eyes slowly cloud over as all focus is centered on his wings that cover his entire vision in the dim room. They seem to glow thanks to the glowberries positioned at the back of the room.

“No, they’re not hurt. But everything else? It hurts. I don’t want to fall asleep yet.” Dream whispered in a pleading tone as he slowly droops his wings behind him. Scott’s eyes clear and he looks into Dream’s, his green eyes shining with unshed crocodile tears as his grip on Scott’s wrists tightens.

“You’re going to feel better if you do, though,” Scott replies as he pushes Dream to lay down on the nest of blankets and pillows.

“How do I know that I’m safe?”

“You will be. We’ll make sure of it.” Scott can only offer a reassuring smile. “Now, how about telling me what you want for your hibernating room?”

It took the rest of the day, having started around noon, but Scott finally returns to the surface where Ranboo just leaves him there and goes back to where Dream is in his new hibernation chamber. The entire room, which is dimly lit with glowberries on vines from the temporary hibernating room, is built to look like an indoor garden, the floor being made of moss carpet with amethyst blocks underneath and vines sticking to the walls and ceiling, all of which were made of logs. Instead of a nest, in the very center of the room is a cocoon hammock bed where Dream is currently resting, still under the aftereffects of overdrinking weakness potions.

“So? How did it go?” Ranboo quietly asks as he peaks into the room. Dream groans before he slurs out, “Scott’s been influenced.”

“Perfect. Should we go after Wilbur and Sneeg to make sure they don’t barge in on us?” The enderian’s footsteps cause the amethyst underneath the moss to generate light twinkling noises as he finally enters the room, softly closing the door shut behind him. “Fundy too. Tommy said that he’s known for stealing and griefing.”

Ranboo lets out a quiet growl in frustration, “Of course he’d make things difficult.”

“It shouldn’t be too much of a problem.” Dream draws in a deep breath in and out, his body feeling like it’s tied to weights. “Just tell them that I want to meet the others one by one. I would love to meet the community that let us in with no return.”

“But then you’d-”

“Ranboo,” Dream shifted around in his hammock bed to peer out and look at the enderian with toxic green eyes. “I’m just pushing them in the right direction.”

A sharp smile spreads on Dream’s face, “In the end, it’s you who gets to have the honor of tearing everyone apart.” His voice, hoarse from screaming and having to vomit out copious amounts of water and raw potatoes, bounces around the dim room, his whisper sounding much louder in Ranboo’s ears as excitement floods his body once he registers that he’s planned to be the main villain of this loop.

"I'm just making sure that there aren't any unwanted eyes that could potentially ruin this for you."

Chapter Text

Dream didn’t really have much to do other than guard and torture the Vault’s only prisoner, Sam.

Quackity and Wilbur were originally prisoners as well, but Tubbo ordered that he hand over the former as he wants to personally punish him for his attempts at creating a revolution, and the latter is still useful in gathering information, so after a long talk to prove that he is still loyal (he was, Dream just wanted to see Wilbur squirm under his gaze), he was set free once more to do whatever he wanted as long as he doesn’t damage the prison or Manberg.

Today, however, seems to be special as Ranboo and Charlie arrived at the Vault’s entrance unannounced, which is a pleasant surprise.

Dream greets them at the entrance with a nod once he steps out of the portal. Charlie is practically bouncing on his feet and vibrating while Ranboo has this glint in his eyes. What is today’s occasion?

“Dream, the president of Manberg wants your presence in Manberg. Charlie can watch the Vault.” Ah, so Ranboo is staying in character. Interesting. “Alright then. Lead the way.”

Ranboo nods once and turns to walk down the path back to the nation of Manberg. Dream follows the hybrid with no hesitation. Turning to look over his shoulder, he sees Charlie stepping into the portal, to watch over the prison as promised.

Once Manberg is in view, the first thing Dream notices are the towering obsidian walls. The next thing he notices are the gates that are being guarded by Fundy and Punz. Ranboo pays them no mind as he enters through the open gates while using his communicator. Dream decides to have a look around as he rarely ever visits the nation in this loop, or any outside place as he has duties in the prison.

The place is very welcoming and festive for starters as he takes note of many plants and flowers that have grown beside the pavements and paths that he can clearly remember were not there before. The area seems to be clean of any speck of dirt, especially the stage at the center of Manberg where he can see the citizens decorating it and around the area. Another festival already?

Interestingly enough, the people seem to be at peace with their lives despite having some of their freedom restricted. How Tubbo appeased the people, Dream has no idea and can only guess that he’s made excuses and honey-coated lies of it being part of their safety.

They eventually make their way into the White House where Tubbo and Tommy wait for them in the former’s office.

"What are today's plans?" Dream wonders.

“Hello, citizens of Manberg. Welcome to our first-ever manhunt festival, where we celebrate both our accomplishments, and punish those who have threatened our peace. Today, I have with me, my vice president, Tommy, and my secretary of defense, Ranboo. Give them a round of applause as they’ve both done incredibly hard work!”

People cheered and clapped with genuine enthusiasm, much to Dream’s growing surprise. He has been standing behind the stage’s curtains where he can listen for his cue to reveal himself, which also serves as him discovering what Tubbo’s been doing.

Ever since he was ordered to leave Manberg, the other loopers have been very secretive, and now he’s just discovering that Ranboo is part of the cabinet, who he originally thought was just a messenger between himself and Tubbo if Tommy ever got too busy to do it himself.

Then came the next surprise, which is the festival itself. A manhunt festival. It is no secret that Dream is notorious for his manhunts (mainly of him being hunted) and he hadn’t really thought much of it when his charges asked about his experiences with them, or how he admitted that he missed playing them. He didn’t think they’d do something like this.

He zones out for most of the speech as he absentmindedly taps his foot against the wooden floor of the stage when finally, his name is called.

Dream steps out to the stage where another round of applause greets him, the faces of the crowd all showing smiles that didn’t reach their eyes yet don’t appear to be forced, as if conditioned to do so, or they truly in on the cabinet's illusions of living in a great nation of peace?

Just how much did Tubbo improve in brainwashing and conditioning people? Because this is most certainly impressive.

A glance over to his side and he can see a tiny quirk up of the corners of Ranboo's lips, and he immediately knew that he's smirking. Tommy wasn't even subtle, openly grinning sharply at the crowd, but he knows that they're meant for him. They outdid themselves and no doubt he'll be giving them praise later in the day.

As Tubbo finishes his speech, Dream is asked to step toward the very back of the stage, which he does, and then Tommy asks for the hunters and the hunted to be revealed. Walking up onto the stage and to Dream's sides are Puffy and Punz. The crowd makes way as guards lift three separate cages that carry Schlatt without his horns, Quackity with many dark bruises, and surprisingly, Techno with stubs instead of hands and partially healed scars.

When the guards line the cages at the front of the stage, they walk back down and form a uniform line to keep the people from crowding the pathway.

"Ten, nine-" Ranboo, who’s standing at the side along with Tubbo and Tommy, starts counting down with his arm pointing up in the air, in his hand is a remote with a singular button on it.

Dream bends his knees as he summons an iron axe that's enchanted with fire aspect and unbreaking, one of many items that Tubbo provided while also informing him that he's not allowed to use weapons outside of what he is given and what he has obtained during this special event. From the corners of his eyes, he can see Puffy and Punz tensing as well as Ranboo countdown nears its end.

All of his attention is focused on his assigned target, Quackity.

"-one," Ranboo presses the button, and the cages are unlocked. The three hunted push the doors open and immediately bolt down the stage and through the cleared path that leads them directly to Manburg’s open gates, out of the nation.

The three hunters run after them as the crowd yells out encouragement for them to “Get the hunted!” along with cheers thrown in with their name.

They split off once they exit the nation to seek out their targets. While Dream was given a compass to help track Quackity, he was also given a collar to track himself down, not because that he was untrusted, but for the viewing pleasures of the crowd back at the nation.

The stage’s curtains were pulled back by two slime clones of Charlie to show the people three screens with the names of whose point of view they were watching from.

They let out shouts of excitement at the many close calls of either a hunter almost catching their hunted, or when the hunter did some stunt to continue to entertain them as they rushed through shrubs and bushes.

Tubbo smirks as he pats Tommy on the shoulder and Ranboo on his back. “This festival is going rather smoothly than expected, you guys.”

“Of course! Don’t expect anything less from the TommyInnit!” He proudly says as he watches Dream jump from tree to tree, drawing ever so closer to Quackity as he continues to sprint through the forest, making sudden turns in an attempt to lose Dream off his trail.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen Dream so in his element before,” Ranboo comments. Dream jumps high into the air and falls down with a downward swing of his axe, barely missing Quackity as he stumbles back in surprise and panic. Quackity wastes no time steadying himself and sprinting away, his heavy pants and fear in his eyes shown very clearly on the big screen. “Okay, he definitely missed him on purpose.”

“Hey, whatever makes this festival fun. The citizens seem to enjoy it!” Tubbo’s point is proven by the sounds of the crowd screaming in anticipation, fully indulging themselves in this violent form of entertainment.

“True,” Ranboo agrees with no hesitation or resistance.

The two assistant Charlies merge into one and move to stand between Ranboo and Tubbo. "Is World the only one who can torture the prisoner? He looks very antsy without Dream for his daily visits."

Tubbo's expression sours a bit as he's reminded of Sam, "Yeah, sure. Go ahead. Dream won't mind." He then turns to face Charlie, "And please call him Dream when in public. You can call him World when we're out of sight."

Chapter Text

Things had been a little rocky at the start, but after some loops, they’ve grown to work together. Some of the loopers hated the other, that hate mostly being aimed at Dream for obvious reasons.

Though a moment of clarity accidentally given to them by Charlie led to all five of them sitting in a room where they talk of their perspectives of the entire history of the original timeline (mostly Dream’s), and that negativity dulled down with understanding. The hate is still there, but it’s not as intense.

Dream intended to be good, promising not to go back to his ways of being a villain, and he gained their trust with each loop. Everyone did their best to get a happy ending, but Dream was the one that tried that hardest as he is the server’s Admin, and he felt that he needed to succeed for the others' sake. That want for happiness changed more loops later, themselves being the ones to change as well.

Dream knows that people can only go so far and try for so much for so long before they finally reach their limit, and after the first initial moments of denial in the first few loops, after having tried and failed dozens of times in righting their wrongs while Dream tried to keep everyone’s hopes up, after shedding and sharing so many tears and pain, they can only handle having their limit reached multiple times before they start severely breaking.

They’ve gone through the three stages of grief, and now, they’re in the fourth.

“No, Dream. Fuck this! I’m done! We’re done! We’ve been doing this for who the fuck knows how long!” Tommy yells out in rage as he stands in the middle of the prison’s main cell. Dream puts his hands up, trying to pacify his weekly visitor.

“Wait, Tommy-”

“You’re seriously still trying? Come on, Dream! Where was that villain act you had in the first timeline!? Stop trying to be a hero for people that won’t remember!”

Dream falters at that. He’s been made painfully aware that the others gave up on trying after so long, Charlie more so bored than angry. They all wanted to do something new, they wanted to abandon their morals, wanted to try being the villains.

“If being a hero brings us pain, being a villain should give us some form of peace, right?” He remembers Tubbo saying in the darkness of their cave, the only light source they had is a torch that he waved around in his moment of contained rage.

The prisoner of Pandora’s Vault remembers that he swore not to be a villain again, to help bring them their happy ending. At this point, keeping that promise is futile, but he tries for another go.

Dream holds both of his index fingers up, a pleading look on his scarred face as he looks at Tommy. “One more try," One more shot at keeping that promise, to stop them from going down the dark path he took in the first timeline. 'Then I won’t stop you. I won’t join you, but I’ll be out of the way. Just...give me one more chance, and if it fails, you can do whatever you want.”

Tommy glares at him in silence, his fists shaking at his sides. Dream silently prays that he’ll accept, and maybe the others will as well. Charlie will probably tell the others about this. He is always watching, after all.

“Fine. One more loop, then we’re done.”

And Dream should be happy that he’s been given another chance, but he doesn’t. His charges may be in the stage of anger, but he was still in a state of denial.

First thing’s first, leave L’Manberg alone. Easy enough for Dream to do, or so he thought. Sapnap and George hated the nation, and this seems to cause more tension between his faction and L’Manberg.

Tommy wants to help smooth out the tension as part of the deal to try another peaceful loop because, for some reason, Sapnap and him have some kind of good connection, but Wilbur is very insistent on keeping him glued to his side. Tubbo is rarely seen, they can only guess that he's in the same situation as Tommy, but with Schlatt, and no doubt that they'll not see him until later on.

Ranboo has been trying to figure out where Charlie is but with how bad his memory is, he just can’t remember the coordinates, or what biome the slime is waiting in. He needed the slime person to help smooth out other conflicts as he is not involved in any of them, just a distant witness, a way for many tunnel-visioned warriors to see a new perspective of everything and hopefully clear any assumptions that have been treated as facts and truths.

Everyone seems to be tied to their own situations, unable to help the other to make it work.

Election day came and, unsurprisingly, Schlatt won. Tommy and Tubbo remained blank-faced the entire time, bored and tired of having to go through this again, but if it gets them to finally have the future loops they craved where they can destroy the server and release their wrath upon it without Dream trying to interfere and play hero? They’ll do this song and dance one more time.

The first and most likely only exile that Tommy will have to live through in this loop is filled with him just standing in a cave, listening to Wilbur’s speech. “Fucking hell does he not know how to shut the fuck up?” He quietly seethed while he kept a straight face, which was a struggle in and of itself, but hey, it was good practice to master a poker face at least.

Everything seems to be going the same way as the original timeline up until the end of Manberg-Pogtopia war. Instead of Philza, it was Dream who confronted Wilbur. The nation still got blown up, but Wilbur is alive. In all honesty, the Admin has no idea how Wilbur got his hands on so much TNT without his aid, but that doesn’t matter all that much now, all that matters is that he gets the ex-president some help.

Ph1lza joined the game.

CaptainPuffy joined the game.

Dream just hopes that this is enough. A heavy sigh escapes him as he turns to the ruins of SMP and immediately jumps into the fray to help battle the wither skeletons once he sees that Techno left the destruction and that Tommy ender pearled his way in to look after Wilbur.

He was met with surprised and distrusting looks but it doesn’t really matter. Despite this loop being his idea, Dream just knows that this is going to end in failure.

He doesn’t know why he wanted to try one more time.

“Well,” He thinks as someone (probably Quackity) keeps framing him of crimes he never committed, and the other loopers can’t really do anything about it without being dragged down themselves (not that he wanted them to anyway). “I guess I’m done being in denial.”

Hey, at least he’s ready for his time in prison, whether or not he’s innocent is not brought up into question. The planted evidence was convincing enough to point him guilty with no room for doubt.

Dream looks back behind him, back at the nation that started as a drug empire, now a nation being built to scam people out of their money and get themselves addicted to gambling.

He looks at the other loopers and gives a subdued bow of his head, and they understand what he meant. They are happy that they now can do whatever they want in the next loops to come, but it’s still not easy for them to see Dream look so defeated, so tired.

For him, they decided to play along, stay in character with a heavy heart as they continue on, acting as if they believed in Quackity’s bullshit.

In Tommy’s opinion, it’s not really bad being a ghost, aimlessly floating throughout the SMP with a large bleeding cut across his chest. Sure, his way of dying hurt like a bitch, and he was practically tortured before dying by the corrupt hands of Sam for information of Tubbo, but hey, at least he has some form of revenge by giving him blank stares whenever they cross paths to then turn away, dismissive in his grief-stricken face full of regret. Plus, he gets to keep Dream company for the time being.

Ranboo has since been on the run after the Egg managed to somehow get Tubbo and made him kill Michael, his blood practically covering the entirety of his bedroom with only his head left intact on his bed, just to really make sure that he knew that the blood came from their son and nobody else. Admittedly, everything in his head hurt. First, he gets to deal with the overwhelming voices with no help from Techno as he has been deemed a foe because of his involvement with the Butcher Army, and now this? Normally he hated forgetting about things, but now, at this very moment, he very much wants his own head to forget about this loop.

Tubbo? He’s stuck in his own version of Pandora’s Vault. As his body moves, controlled by the Egg, mentally, he’s in a small red room with absolutely nothing to do other than just think and stare blankly at a random spot on the wall or ceiling. At least he can say that he can relate with Dream with his experiences of isolation. They could be prison buddies, talking about their time in jail. Tubbo snorts at the thought, his amusement quickly dying as it appeared.

Charlie hasn’t been doing well either. Sure, he helps Quackity emotionally but at times, he’s being used as a stress toy because he’s mostly made of slime, and in Quackity's eyes, he shouldnt be seen as equal with the other players. The fact that the bones Charlie is using belonged Schlatt’s might have made things worse, or better, he’s not entirely sure. He has been wearing suits as of late due to Quackity’s demands, and he’s not blind to see that he’s slowly replacing Schlatt, and since the dead president (emperor?) of Manberg wasn’t exactly kind to the duck hybrid behind closed doors (Charlie remembers vividly that the ram hybrid did something to Quackity’s wings that made it so that they had to be removed to avoid more pain to the duck hybrid himself), his job as his personal dammit doll when his daily visit with Dream wasn't enough seems to be more in use.

Then there’s the looming threat of Philza and Technoblade planning on destroying the nations and maybe get Dream out, though they all doubt that’ll ever happen, and if it did, it’s probably for business that might not end well as Philza has a bit of a vendetta against him, blaming Dream for the events that led to Wilbur’s spiral down madness.

Even though they’re no strangers to being hurt, they all hope that this loop shows them just a bit of kindness for once and reset already.

“World?” Charlie calls out into the cave of the loopers’ base. Dream has been hiding away for most of the loop, which started around the time L’Manberg got its independence. The slime isn’t entirely sure why the server’s Admin is hiding away, and the others had told him to leave Dream alone, but this is the Admin they’re talking about, a being that’s connected to the server, the World.

Charlie may not understand a lot of things, but what he can understand is that Dream is in a state of sorrow as he can see it in the server’s land. The increased frequency of rains, the slow attack speed of hostile mobs, the drooping flowers, everything just didn’t feel bright and lively anymore.

“Hello? World?”

“I’m right here, Charlie.” Came the quiet voice that echoed throughout their cave. In the farthest corner, deep within the darkness, Charlie can faintly see the glow of holographic screens that float in front of Dream’s maskless and tired face.

“Aren’t you going to join them?” Asked Charlie, his volume a little lower than he would normally talk in.

The silence stretches between them. Charlie steps forward to enter after sensing the sweet smell in the air that appears before the rain. “No, not now. I’m busy.”

“Busy? With what?”

“Getting the world to acknowledge you as a player, Charlie. I noticed that you only get your inventory and communicator after you meet Quackity.”

“But, don’t you already see me as, what you call, a player?” Charlie tilts his head, his voice full of confusion as he tries to understand, his voice rising back up to his regular volume.

“Yes, I do, but the server itself doesn’t, Charlie. I’m not actually the world just because I’m an Admin. You can compare the server and I as a child and its caretaker.” Another moment of silence covers the cave as Dream lets the slime humanoid process his words.

“...so, does this mean you're my dad?” Dream lets out a startled wheeze before covering his mouth to stop himself. “That doesn’t sound right. World sounds better because you’re part of the world,” Charlie continues, clueless as to why he’s laughing. Dream just waves a dismissive hand at him.

“Call me whatever you want, Charlie. Just know that you don’t have to go and see Quackity or anybody else to get an inventory and communicator.”

Charlie gives Dream a wide smile as he perks up, “Okay, World!”

“Oh, and Charlie?”

“Yes?”

“Please try calling me Dream when other people besides us loopers are around. I don’t want people knowing or remembering that I’m the server’s Admin.”

“Okay, Dream the World!”

The Admin can only let out an amused sigh. He feels as though this is going to take a while, and he is proven correct after many times and loops, he still addresses him as “World”. At least he has gotten better though, only doing it in the privacy of their hideouts.

At the same time, Charlie manages to cheer him up and slowly invited him into joining the other loopers in their fun, because it’s his self-assigned job to make sure that the World is happy like they are. Feeling sad is not very good from what he can see, and from what he experienced.

“Dreeeaaam, come oooooooon!” Tommy loudly whines as he bangs his head against the door. Right after repairing L’Manberg after Wilbur blew it up, Tommy went to work in building another house and asking Ranboo and Charlie to track him down so that Tubbo could put him on house arrest.

Currently, say Admin is hiding in his house, still not entirely in on the idea of going full villain with them by his side after making a promise long ago that he would be good. Back then, he appreciated that Dream wouldn’t do anything anymore, now, however, Tommy is just annoyed and wished he never made that promise.

“Dreeeaaam! Just try it one time! One time!”

“Tommy, what are you doing?” The mentioned teen spins around to see Fundy right behind him, holding a bouquet of flowers. “Trying to get Dream to hang out with me. You?” Tommy asks as he eyes the flowers. Fundy follows his line of sight and lets out a little “eep!” before hiding the bouquet behind his back. “Uh, nothing important. Nothing important!”

Tommy looks, really looks, at Fundy in the eyes with a blank and unreadable expression. Fundy stares back at Tommy, his smile ever so slowly widening as sweat starts forming on his head. Tommy’s face scrunches a bit, “Sure, whatever man. Just don’t do anything gross.”

He ignores Fundy’s face going red and how he chokes on his own saliva as he walks away with a huff.

Just because he’s leaving Dream alone now that doesn’t mean that he’s giving up on him. He already gave up on him way too many times in previous timelines.

And it looks like his determination paid off when Dream started talking to him again, of course, he has to watch his voice. He was the one that confronted Dream and yelled at him to hurry up and be a villain again, after all. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that he may have shaken him up while he was vulnerable.

“Dream? You here somewhere?” Tubbo asks out into the forest. He has been searching for the green man for weeks now. Charlie and Tommy have since wrangled Tubbo into getting him to be a bad guy once they think that he’s comfortable enough to have them around, and so far, Dream’s been getting better at hiding.

The only sounds that Tubbo can hear are his own footsteps, the wind, and the occasional background noise of animals minding their own business

He soon goes to a halt when he hears the sounds of someone chopping wood, and he immediately finds cover behind a tree. Tubbo, already knowing who it is, stealthily walks in the direction of the foreign sounds.

Just as he guessed, it was Dream. He’s just about done chopping down a tree and is now collecting the wood, placing them, along with his axe, into his inventory with a heavy sigh. He then takes out his communicator, most definitely talking with Tommy as he was the one that asked Dream to collect a large amount of wood for their new base, not knowing that the real purpose of his task was so that Tubbo can talk to him.

Quietly stepping out from behind the tree he’s currently hiding, he purposefully steps on a branch, causing Dream to whip around and point his axe at him. Tubbo, however, remained unfazed as he gave him a comforting smile, “Hey bossman. How’s it been?”

Dream slowly lowers his weapon and lets out another loud sigh, head slightly turned away, not a word spoken. He then takes a sudden step back when Tubbo suddenly places a boat between them and hopped right in, turning to Dream expectantly.

“Well? Come on! We’re going to deliver that wood with swag,” Tubbo says while taking a pair of sunglasses out from his inventory, quickly wearing it and pushing it down his nose so that he can look at Dream over the glass’ frame.

He lets out yet another sigh, this one vaguely sounding like laughter after a long pause. Dream slowly moves forward and climbs into the back of the boat, Tubbo waiting patiently for him to get comfortable before rowing them forward to L’Manberg while telling him all of the harmless pranks that they wanted to try out.

It wasn’t really something they really wanted to do, but if they want Dream to be a part of their villain arc, they might as well start small and work their way up.

And speaking of making their way up, Dream stares at the stones slabs at the side of the hill they're ever so slowly traveling up to, dumbfounded to find Tubbo still talking about how tiring it was to run a nation and is planning to step down and hand his presidency over to Fundy or Niki as the nation usually flourishes under their guidance as if it was just a normal everyday thing.

Ranboo watches from the kitchen to see Michael playing with a heavily scarred Dream. They just got him out of Puffy's "care" and are now just planning to hide him in Snowchester for the rest of the loop while they take advantage of the panic and chaos going on right after everyone was informed of Puffy's abusive behaviors that made Wilbur look like a good father. An absent father, but a good one nonetheless in comparison to Puffy.

The enderman hybrid is apparently the only person left that Dream’s not entirely comfortable with, but it should be as easy as Charlie’s attempts as he never made any advances of forcing Dream to join them some loops ago when they were filled with the desire for vengeance and the need to vent all the anguish that they accumulated over the loops.

In fact, apart from Dream, he himself didn’t want to be a part of it, but after several other loops and a long discussion with his platonic husband, he slowly eased himself into the role of fellow villain.

Ranboo takes a quick glance down at his communicator, seeing the public chat being spammed with messages from the alarmed people of the SMP. He ignores it all and checks on any private messages, specifically from Charlie to see if anyone’s near Snowchester. None so far.

Putting the communicator away, he places three cups of hot chocolate, a glass of milk, and a large plate of warm cookies onto a tray and brings it over to the living room. He gently places them on the coffee table and lets Michael take his milk and a few cookies as he happily munches down.

Dream quietly picks his cup up and inhales the steam rising from it. The hybrid takes a seat right next to Dream and places a gentle hand on his shoulder, “I see Michael’s grown to like you.”

He slowly nods with a tiny smile on his face as he eyes the bouncing ball of energy that is Michael as he runs around, chasing his pet chicken so that he can introduce it to Dream. “He’s a great kid.”

They settle in comfortable silence, sipping on their cups of hot chocolate. Soon, a pile of slime comes down from the ladder leading up the second floor and slithers over to snatch the last remaining warm cup of cocoa into its opaque green body.

Unlike Tommy and Tubbo, Ranboo didn’t need to talk to Dream to make him comfortable. He just needed to be around and offer him support.

And now that he's comfortable with all four of them again, they can start with asking for his assistance with materials and slowly make their way up to full-on lessons on how to mess with someone's head.

The loopers dive into a deep pool that surrounds a giant tree in the Interlude, Ranboo being an exception as he teleports inside the hidden room that hides under the tree’s platform.

They open an iron door with a pressure plate that blends into the white tiles around it and one by one, enter the empty and dimly lit white room with a singular ladder at the wall adjacent to them, hidden from the rest of their home dimension. Climbing up that ladder, they’re greeted with Ranboo standing in a room with bookshelves lining the walls, most of which are empty.

They begin taking books out from their inventory, uncaringly shoving them into the shelves with no order. The loopers refused to take a glance inside, just inserting them into the spaces of the shelves with an unnecessarily large amount of force.

Once they’ve emptied their inventories of books that tell of their time as heroes that desired peace, Dream lets them go first, waiting to be alone so that he can leave one last thing to make sure these stories don’t see the surface.

With a practiced mind, he wills the Interlude to create a certain creeper hybrid in enchanted netherite armor in front of him. “Warden.”

The image of Sam stands at attention, trident held firmly in his hand as he listens to what Dream has to say, “Guard these books. Make sure nobody takes or reads one. If anybody that is not us or is not accompanied by us ever enters, you alert us and keep them here. Break their legs, chain them up, torture them, I don’t care, just keep them here until one of us gets back.”

The Warden nods. Dream turns around to descend the ladder. He pushes the button next to the iron door and exits, quickly swimming up to meet with the rest of the loopers. Tommy and Tubbo each extend a hand for Dream to take, which he did. They both pull him up, and Ranboo waves a hand over in Dream’s direction, instantly drying his dripping form and soaked clothes.

“Should we add some stuff in the water?” Charlie asked out of the blue.

“Like what?” Tubbo turns to the currently-human Charlie, “More Sams?”

“Merman Sams? Sure, fuck it. He might even dirty the water if we keep his whole ‘smoke expelling’ thing.” Tommy piped up. “Hmm, not a bad idea. The polluted water can obscure the iron door.” Ranboo says, a hand over his torso while his other hand rests on it, holding his chin up in thought.

“We can think of defenses while we think of ways to make the Interlude our home.” Dream tiredly says as he walks away, the path under him turning into gravel, the sound of it crunching under his feet soothing to his ears.

“Wait, Dream,” Tommy calls out, causing the mentioned man to stop and turn to look at the teen with a raised brow, his face unblocked by his mask that sits on the side of his head. “We have something to show you.”

“Alright, sure. What is it?” Instead of a verbal answer, Ranboo teleports behind Dream and immediately places a blindfold around his eyes. The man startles back but immediately relaxes, having full trust in the enderman hybrid behind him. Ranboo takes his hand and tugs him along, “You’ll see. Just follow along.”

Dream can tell that they were indoors by the way their footsteps bounced back at them with a slight echo. His curiosity peaks when he is left standing alone and hears an extra set of footsteps walk in and pause some distance away in front of him.

“Alright! Take your blindfold off, Dream!” Tubbo calls out from the side to his left. Dream does as told, and what he saw causes him to freeze with his eyes wide open in surprise.

“What the-”

“Dream!” Happily exclaimed the Wilbur look-alike with curling horns at the sides of his head. He wore a yellow sweater and a trenchcoat over his shoulders, acting as a cape of some sort. There seem to be stains of blue on every piece of clothing he’s wearing, mainly on the ends of his sleeves and the bottom of his sweater. The Wilbur look-alike charges at Dream pulls him into a tight hug, rubbing his face against his neck while Dream takes a step back and tries to push him away. The loopers all grin at the sight before them.

“Why is he here?”

“Well,” Charlie drawls out, “We noticed how you liked the Mount Datura loop’s Wilbur and thought maybe you’d like him as an emotional support pet, World!”

“We were planning on making emotional support pets anyways because of how absolutely fucked in the head we are, but we figured maybe we’d make you yours first,” Tubbo explains with a shrug and a small smile. “His name is Wilfred and he’s a sheep hybrid. We gave him a simple personality for starters. You can change and edit the rest of him.”

Dream gives up in his attempts at pushing Wilfred away, freezing as he listens to the words of his family. Then, he slowly wraps his arms around Wilfred, a grateful expression clear on his face. “Thanks, guys.”

The embrace seems to have gotten a bit tighter as Wilfred struggled to take in a full lung of air, not that he is complaining. In fact, his little blue sheep tail seems to be a blur from how fast it’s wagging. “He’ll definitely help me.”

"Good to hear. Now you either rest or you give us suggestions for our own pets."

"Wait, rest? But I'm-"

"Dream, we can literally feel how exhausted you are from where we're standing. You've done most of the work while we were trying to figure out how to edit shit in the Interlude."

"Guys-"

"World, either sleep or sit and help us here."

"..."

"Remember Hybrids & Origins? I'll rant your head off until you pass out if you pick something that's not either sleep or sit."

"...fine."

Chapter Text

Yes, it is true that they can alter the next loop by writing their ideas on a page with the Storybook, but what is not true is that they have complete control over how a loop generates. The generations of the loops aren’t completely random either, sometimes they’re just there to make sense of their ideas, to fill in the gaps.

This loop is a good example of that.

Charlie is not often active in tormenting the server because he is more interested in learning and watching the world, and it is a good thing too as the slime humanoid just sent all of the loopers more information about this loop’s world via communicators.

For starters, souls and cores both are connected with the power and magic aspect of a person. The soul is the powerhouse that generates and stores magic to fuel one’s power. The soul can create excess magic to either a person's corebond or be stored for later use such as in enchanting, and it can also be forcefully broken which results in the soul releasing every magic it had stored. Of course, since the soul is the source of a person’s life force, breaking it means killing the person.

Anybody’s power can still be used even after exhausting their magic reserves but at the cause of their life force, which will lead to death if overused.

More information about cores, it can essentially give a person’s coremate a copy of their power, which manifests as either an item or as (a) new limb(s). An example of the former would be Wilbur being able to give himself an adrenaline/performance boost on demand because of his corebond with Dream. Because Dream is a human (nevermind that he is a god pretending to be one), his powers manifested as an item, which is his iconic mask that sits on the side of Wilbur’s head.

An example of the latter would be Dream’s former corebond with Quackity, which gave him wings as Quackity is a hybrid (a duck hybrid to be exact), and the wings are what separates him from a human. Half of the information wasn't new, but the loopers appreciated Charlie’s help regardless.

Especially now, Tommy greatly appreciated the amazing timing of when Charlie info dumped them all of this information when he found it in Karl’s library because if he hadn’t, Tommy might have lost his first canon life against Sapnap with how heated his fights have been.

Literally.

Sapnap generates another fireball and sends it launching at Tommy in high speeds. The blond deflects it back with his red disk-shaped shields that are just a bit larger than his hands. He can tell that his opponent is getting close to emptying his magic reserve by the way he’s panting, and Tommy just knows that Sapnap can keep going in a physical fight, which led to the conclusion that he’s being affected by magical exhaustion.

Tommy hasn’t broken a sweat as all he’s doing is maintaining one shield that hasn’t shattered as he mainly used an actual wooden shield to block Sapnap’s advances.

Now they stand a few feet away, Tommy smirking at the drained man before him. “Giving up already?”

Sapnap lets out a growl before he lunges at him again, fire igniting in his hands, ready to create more fireballs.

At this point, Tommy can safely say that he won the bet of being the first person to take a canon life off of someone due to overuse of magic.

Now that a certain kidnapped Admin has an understanding of how magic and power-sharing works in this world, Dream knows why he’s almost always exhausted. Coremates share their magic reserves, and Wilbur has been purposefully taking his magic rather than his own while doing who knows what up on the surface. Dream can only let out a sigh, not bothering to hide his frustrations and wanting Wilbur to know that he’s upset.

He sits up from his bed and glances down at his hands, which are covered in Wilbur’s yellow-orange essence in the form of fingerless gloves. He lets a few sparks and explosions out from his palms, draining some of Wilbur’s magic and he almost immediately feels how apologetic Wilbur is.

Good.

Dream wobbly gets up and slowly makes his way into the kitchen to get something to eat. All he can really do in this part of the loop's story is wait for the promised drama as the moment he does anything off-script for any reason (the main one being boredom), Charlie and Ranboo will be right up his case.

At least he has the Memory Books to read through to pass the time.

But then, he hears the familiar knocking on his door. Great, Wilbur’s here.

Dream lets out another frustrated sigh as he ignores the sounds of a door opening and closing, followed by the quiet thuds of feet hitting against tiles. He makes no indication of acknowledging Wilbur who he’s sure is right behind him, even when the madman’s arms wrap around his waist while he’s cooking steak.

A weight balances itself onto his shoulder, then he can clearly hear the whines of the president at the lack of attention he’s getting. “Dreeeaaam….”

Tinges of gloom and need make their way into his core, and Dream only replies by making Wilbur be more aware of his displeasure by sending waves of annoyance and irritation through their bond. This only causes the man to cling to him more and whine right next to his ear. “Dreamy...I’m sorry…”

Oh, this is going to be a long day...

It has been made obvious by now that a war is brewing, and the incident between Schlatt, Tubbo, and Tommy only made the tension rise.

Schlatt has since sided with the Dream SMP faction, acting as a double agent as he follows Tommy’s orders with his son right beside him like a loyal dog awaiting commands with a wide grin on his face.

The worst part of seeing his beloved son like that? Seeing a red transparent bandana around his neck and seeing Tommy sporting two ram horns that should be forest green, but are instead a slightly darker shade of red with specks of essence that’s supposed to look like sand and gunpowder. Not only did Tommy replace Tubbo’s core, but he also made him perform an exchange of essence.

Schlatt had to bite the inner walls of his cheeks to stop himself from doing anything rash to the blond teen. As much as he hates seeing his son like this, Tommy is the one who has his son’s core, and if he attacked, no doubt Tubbo would kill him with no hesitation, and he won’t know where Tubbo’s core is hidden.

Each night, he would sneak out of his house to enter Dream SMP territory to meet up with Quackity, who he has grown close to in this troubling time. Two hybrids who lost their only family, a son, and a friend who became a brother. The rest of the Dream SMP faction left the two alone to comfort each other.

Within L’manburg territory, another pair in the server hides away from prying eyes, soft lullabies are hummed quietly into a certain fox hybrid’s ear as Ranboo rocks them both from side to side, trying to coax Fundy into falling back asleep.

It wasn’t part of the plan to have Fundy be so dependent and trusting towards the nervous and quiet character that Ranboo plays, nor was it part of the plan to be his cuddle and comfort buddy, but with how things go, he might as well roll with it.

They were not in complete control of everything, obviously, there are going to be some unexpected moments such as these, but that’s what keeps every loop interesting, to see where the story goes. They are the audience just as much as they are actors. After all, they are dealing with people who are unaware that they’re part of a stage play too.

“Shhh, shh, everything’s going to be alright,” Ranboo gently rubs circles on Fundy’s back, listening to the sobs dying down into sniffles. “I’ll be right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

They both lay their heads down on their side of the bed, Fundy clinging onto the enderman hybrid, much to his dismay. Well, it’s a good thing Charlie stays in the shadows.

Ranboo pulls out an enchanted book from his inventory and holds it out to the air behind Fundy’s back. A slime mob slowly emerges from under the bed to take the book, teleporting away right after.

He pulls the blankets over himself and the sleeping fox beside him, silently wishing Tommy and Tubbo good luck before joining Fundy into a dreamless sleep.

Tommy has been prowling around the grounds of L’Manberg with Tubbo by his side since the dawn of day. They’ve been quietly talking about redoing a part of their plan as they’ve been made aware several times that Dream is getting bored and tired of staying in the same room, waiting for people to visit him.

The plan was to push the war to happen earlier and then just act out the rest of the loop in character with little arcs here and there if they felt like it.

But then, then, Dream caused Wilbur to tell him why he was infatuated with him in the first place. Charlie overheard the unexpected answer: They are soulmates.

Because of this new development, Charlie immediately searched for more information about soulmates and of Wilbur’s past history through books and his own memories.

Wilbur is a semi-immortal being who can live indefinitely and stay at the same age but can still die. Dream, as Exdee, got bored one day (how typical of him) and disguised himself as another semi-immortal human. This “life” is where he met Wilbur and became coremates.

The death of a coremate can cause the essence left by the dead in the living coremate to essentially be stored within their soul if they truly cared for their now-deceased partner as a way of comforting the grieving person. No powers are kept, however, just the little bits of essence that the soul manages to desperately grasp and hold onto as it feels death forcefully separate their corebond. For mortals, they can choose to hold onto this essence or let it fade, either way, it won’t do anything to them as it is just a form of sentiment.

For immortals, however, they have the third option of fusing the essence into their soul, thus creating a soulbond, which can make reincarnation possible for the dead coremate (now labeled as soulmate) for as long as the immortal is alive, and said immortal can tell who their soulmate is through a sensation many would describe as a “yearning to be whole”, but won’t know where they are until they have laid their eyes on them. Their soulmate, however, won’t retain memories of their previous life, though there are methods available should the need arise.

Dream, who lived as a loving and wise husband named Cornelius at the time, was murdered at night in his hometown. After practically erasing the town for what they’ve done, Wilbur has been traveling, hoping to encounter a reincarnation of his soulmate, becoming more and more obsessed over the years as his guilt for letting Dream die and the desire to together again grew stronger.

Now that Wilbur found him, he’s going to make sure that he stays alive for as long as he can before their time is up, protecting and shielding him from the world so as to not have a repeat of having to search for Dream once again with heavy despair in his chest.

Who knew the Storybook was such a big fan of romance and drama.

They’re all very much excited, if they weren't already, to see Wilbur and Quackity interact and see how the story goes. With new plans and surprises made, Tommy and Tubbo made up their minds and began setting up the next scenes.

Quackity stands before Wilbur, panting heavily as everyone around them maneuvers around the destruction they’ve caused while at war.

“Give-” A cough reaps itself out of the avian’s throat as his yellow wings flapped once due to the unexpected action, then settles to being half-open and puffed out in agitation, netherite armor plates covering the limbs as they shine under the sun with protectve enchantments. “Give him back, Wilbur!” He roars out as he charges the brunette with a swing of his axe.

Schlatt forms an “x” with his two swords to block Tubbo advances of his own sword, his blades trembling due to a mix of Tubbo’s force and his inner turmoil. He knew that it’s futile, but he couldn’t help but plead with his son, “Kid, please! This isn’t you!”

Tubbo lets out a loud, maniacal laugh as he draws his sword back for another strike. Schlatt can only block and step back, unable to bring himself to hurt him, no matter how much it risked his own safety.

As the war raged on, Fundy and Ranboo sneak around it all and infiltrate the miraculously untouched White House, Fundy being the one leading the way as he knew where Dream is being kept.

The go down a set of stairs hidden behind the bookshelves in Wilbur’s office, the passage, despite being narrow, is clean of any dirt with potted plants hung above their heads. It was obvious that Wilbur visited Dream often just by looking at the healthy flowers.

When they finally reach the bottom, Fundy freezes in his steps. Ranboo looks over his shoulder and lets out a confused enderman sound. “What’s wrong?” He whispers to the fox in front of him.

Fundy raises a hand to signal Ranboo to wait as he slowly creeps to the door and presses his head against it, straining his ears for any sounds. One minute passes. Then another. Fundy flexes his fingers as he looks at the doorknob, nervousness entering his system. When he finally grabs it, he twists his hand and is met with no resistance.

The door is unlocked.

Fundy bursts through the door and begins searching the apartment, failing to notice Ranboo calmly entering and gazing around the living room area in search of something else. He finds it, a little note hidden under the sofa’s cushion, its corner picking out from under it.

“He's joining. You don’t have to be with the goods guys” Is written in Ender text on the little note. Ranboo keeps it in his inventory to burn later just as Fundy’s panicked footsteps sound from a hallway. The enderman hybrid melts back into his nervous and fidgety persona as he leans his weight from foot to foot, rocking himself from side to side. He whips his head to a heavily breathing Fundy wide, dilated eyes, his ears folded back against his head, obvious signs of fear within foxes.

“Dream’s not here, but nobody else could know where he is except for-” Fundy suddenly stills as realization floods in his mind. Ranboo frowns in feigned worry, “Fundy? Where’s Dream? You said that he’d be here.”

Fundy’s breath intake gradually increases, and Ranboo slowly moves forward to place two calming hands on each of his shoulders, “Fundy, please breathe with me, okay? We can-”

“It’s Tommy,” The fox’s eyes lose their focus and unseeing as he fails to notice Ranboo’s attempts at soothing him. “Tommy knows, he knows-”

Ranboo pulls Fundy into a hug, lightly patting and rubbing his back as he rocks them back and forth, a familiar and comforting action to Fundy. “We can still save him, Fundy. We can still fix this.” The smirk on the enderman’s face says otherwise.

Quackity now stands above Wilbur’s form on the ground, axe pressed against the president’s chest as they both breathe heavily from their hard battle. “We can still end this peacefully, Wilbur. Just tell me where you’re keeping Dream.”

Wilbur lets out an amused sigh as he fearlessly meets Quackity’s eyes, “And if I don’t? What then?”

The armor plates protecting the duck hybrid’s wings clink together as they shift with the limbs’ movement, now spread out in anger as Quackity pushes his weapon’s blade onto Wilbur’s neck, yet despite the danger, Wilbur’s grin stubbornly stays where it is. “I’m not above torturing you, you bastard.”

“Doing so will hurt Dream too.” And Quackity lets out a frustrated growl as he stares at the opaque green mask on Wilbur’s head. Coremates can sometimes share more than just their respective powers and feelings if so desired, or forced. They can share their thoughts, their dreams, their struggles, and their pain.

And throughout the entire fight, Quackity has been using the blunt side of his axe to minimize the damage done to Wilbur, and now that he has him pinned, he can’t do anything to him without hurting his brother.

Glancing to his right and he can see that Schlatt is letting himself be forced back by his brainwashed son and remembers a snippet of their argument they had the night before.

“Why are you trying to stop us from going after Tommy, Schlatt? Are you the traitor?” Quackity seethingly demands as he glares at the hybrid blocking the doorway. “Because he's coremates with my son. If he’s willing to use Tubbo as his puppet, then he’s willing to use him as his shield.” Schlatt angrily explains with his teeth bared at the other. "I'm not protecting Tommy. I'm protecting my son."

So this is what he meant.

Despite standing over Wilbur, it appears that he has the upper hand, and the president’s smirk turns into a victorious grin upon seeing the conflicted look on Quackity’s face. “What’s wrong, Quackity? I thought you wanted to hurt me-” Wilbur’s eyes suddenly widen as his body grows stiff, hands flying towards his chest, clutching the fabric of his uniform as sweat begins to form on his forehead, still ignoring the axe that's dangerously close to his neck.

Quackity tenses but does not make a move to step away, although his grip on the axe’s handle falters as he slowly recognizes what’s happening. “D-Drea-eam?” Wilbur’s hushed voice whispered as he looked down at his chest.

Then, Wilbur lets out an agonized scream with another schriek sounding from where he saw Schlatt. Turning again to his right, he can see Tubbo clutching at his own chest as well, Schlatt drops his duel swords and rushes to his son, gathering him in his arms as they both sit on the ground. The young ram doesn't register Schlatt's presence as he continues to scream in pain, the father trying to help ease his pain and provide some kind of comfort by hugging him as tightly as he could. Quackity doesn't doubt that he's reliving the moment when he was forced to watch Tommy take Tubbo's core.

Quackity then looks back down to find that the smiley mask made of lime green essence is dissolving. That might have brought relief that Dream is no longer connected with the crazed man under him until he realized that there was one person missing in the battlefield, one that is keeping Tubbo away from his father, one that has always been by Wilbur’s side.

Tommy never made an appearance when they first stood against their opponents as a last warning before war broke out.

Looking back at the two sheep hybrids, he notices that Tubbo’s translucent red bandana remains unchanged, then looking back at Wilbur's smiley mask, he can see that the lime green essence is not dissolving, but rather transferring to Tubbo's head to create Dream's mask, and he can only come to one conclusion.

Tommy is the traitor, and not in the way that anybody expected.

In an effort to know where Dream is being kept, Quackity discards his axe and tightly grips onto Wilbur’s shoulders, harshly shaking him to get his attention from the pain of having their corebond forcefully replaced. “Wilbur! WILBUR! Tell me where Dream is!” He shouts over Wilbur’s screams of anguish yet is not acknowledged.

Tears run down the president’s face as he curls in on himself, his arms wrapping around his torso as he lets out whispered pleads of “Dream, stay!” and “Don’t leave me alone again!”

“Quackity!” The avian quickly turns to Schlatt, the man he has grown close to ever since he joined their side to stop Wilbur and get his son back, looks at him with terror clear in his eyes as he cradles an unconscious Tubbo in his arms, the teen no longer able to tolerate the pain. Dread pools in his stomach, and an icy chill frosts over his veins at what he hears Schlatt say.

“The area is lined with TNT! We need to go, now!”

Tommy leans back in his chair with his feet up on the table of the meeting room of their base, arms up and behind his head with a big smile on his face. Across from him is Dream who's leaning his head on his hand, his other hand idly drumming against the table's surface.

At the very front of the room is a large screen that’s split into six different points of view, three of which from the loopers, the other three from the little slimes that Charlie gave cameras to, and are now sneaking around filming everything.

They can see people fleeing the exploding battlefield that is L’Manberg, many of which weren’t so lucky if their rapidly beeping communicators had anything to say about it. No doubt being spammed with death messages.

Tommy points and laughs at Ranboo’s face as he tries to glare up at a camera, as he as well as the others were unaware of the TNT hidden underground except for Tubbo and himself.

“I can tell that this was a sudden change in plans. Besides me getting bored, what is the other motive?” Dream asks, not taking his eyes off the screen. He lightly pulls and fidgets the red bandana around his neck, sometimes tapping on the red curled horns around his head, both of which were made of essence from Tommy and Tubbo respectively.

Tommy looks at Dream and gives him a mischievous smile. Dream can’t help but think that his smile matches the transparent lime green smiley mask on his head. “I wanna be the main villain this time around. I mean, I sided with Wilbur, and once he’s taken care of, what then? Might as well keep this loop rolling while you play damsel in distress.”

Dream lets out a huff that suspiciously sounded like laughter. Either way, they don’t acknowledge it. “And what are your other plans, oh great big bad guy?”

"Well," A smirk is all he gets as a warning before a book is loudly slammed on the table between them. “You could say that the power is getting into my head.”

The following days after the war were filled with either grief or anger, both of which are silent. Wilbur and Tubbo are kept in cells at the Courthouse, both guarded by Sam and Punz. The people who visited often are Quackity and Schlatt, and they would mostly go together to visit their respective prisoners.

Wilbur flips between an enraged state where he rattles the bars of his cell and paces around, and a depressed state where he quietly cradles his core in the corner of his room, its original yellow-orange color either glowing into a bright neon or dimming into a muted version of its color to reflect his state of mind. Tubbo on the other hand, remains stubborn, refusing to cooperate with Schlatt who has come to see him as an enemy rather than a father. He kicks and growls at Schlatt, refusing to listen to any words that come out of anyone's mouth. It obviously hurts Schlatt, but he doesn't plan on giving up, and he absolutely refuses to make a husk out of Tubbo by taking his current core out, the image of Tubbo staring back at him with dull eyes haunting him every night along with his loud pleas for his father to stop Tommy from hurting him.

What good they got out of the imprisoned pair, they can now confirm that Dream is somewhere with Tommy if the green mask made of essence on the side of Tubbo's head is any indicator.

All parties involved in the war had to stay in the Community House as both nation territories were destroyed in the blast. It was a tight squeeze with high tension in the air, but they expanded as time went by while they quietly spoke to each other, more so the citizens of L'Manberg as they explained that Wilbur twisted their views about the people in the Dream SMP nation.

Now, after several busy days straight of nonstop work, Quackity decides to take a stroll around the forest to clear his mind and calm down, just as George suggested, though he probably won’t take it as easy like the now-probably-sleeping colorblind man.

To this day, Quackity can still feel the phantom pains of when his corebond was violently torn apart, and he will admit that while it was satisfying to beat Wilbur into a bloody pulp, it did little to ease those pains.

The crunching of leaves causes him to pause and snap out of his own head as he begins looking around for the source. Taking his axe out of his inventory, he yells out, “Who’s there!?”

The branches and bushes are disturbed to his left and he lowers into a fighting stance as he grips onto his weapon’s handle, fully expecting it to be Tommy or someone who's working for him.

A new face with slime on his head and shoulder pops up, twigs and leaves stuck to his form and glasses askew on his head, yet he ignores his messy appearance in favor of waving happily at Quackity.

“Hello, Quackity from Dream SMP!”

Chapter Text

The loopers will admit that they have a disturbing mind to have come up with some of the loops such as that one time where they were walking drug generators that smelled of fruits and berries to control people or that other time where they essentially turned the prison that is Pandora’s Vault into the Obsidian Temple where they slowly grew their cult.

But they still have their own moments of peaceful loops too, or whatever they think a “peaceful” loop is for them.

Tommy awoke to find himself in a dark bedroom, his limbs all wearing white bands with strings attached to them. Looking up, he can see that the strings are connected to the ceiling. Tommy tests the strings by lifting his arms, and the strings don’t appear to loosen up, as if he’s being puppeteered. It still feels like he’s in control though.

“Guys?” He calls out as he removes the blanket off of himself. Instead of standing, he floats a few inches off the ground, held up by the strings on- actually, the strings look to be going through the ceiling. “This is pretty cool.” He does a little twirl before floating over to his door went outside his bedroom.

He’s greeted with a very open corridor, and it looks like he’s not the only one looper in this mansion. In this loop, they’re all human, or in some way look like human. Another door opens and out floats Tubbo, strung up by his own strings. “Tommy! We’re all family!”

They both floated over to each other with arms wide open, laughing as they collided. They continue to laugh in joy as they spun around the hallway in each other’s arms, somehow not getting their strings tangled together.

“Tommy! Tubbo! Over here!” They both turn to the voice and find the remaining three of their family, also being held up afloat with strings at the end of the corridor.

“Guys!” “Hey!” They all charged at each other and hugged it out, again, spinning around with their strings remaining untangled.

Now that their rare happy reunion time as one big canon family in a loop is done, they inspected each other’s outfits. Tommy seems to be wearing some kind of blacksmith’s outfit with a pair of goggles on his head, Tubbo having a simple blue shirt and matching pants with a white painter’s apron, Charlie’s wearing a white dress shirt, black pants, and a white waist apron, and Ranboo seems to be wearing his normal suit and tie outfit. All of their outfits have little decorations of color that they’re associated with, like Tommy’s having reds, Ranboo having purples, et cetera.

Dream, oh boy. He looks to be wearing a black long-sleeved illusion dress that flowed gracefully with his movements. There appears to be a slit at the side of the dress where they can all see his leg, and they can clearly see that he is wearing very dark green, almost black, stockings with jet-black heels.

That’s just the outfit. He doesn’t seem to be wearing a mask, nor did he ever wear a mask in this loop as far as their memories can tell them, so now he's instead wearing black lipstick and eyeshadow with emerald jewelry to top everything off, his long flowing blond hair that reached his shoulder blades just being an added bonus to his appearance.

“Damn, Dream! The loops can’t help but make you look extra, huh?” Tommy then lets out a whistle as he circles him, along with Tubbo.

“I guess I’m just extra by default,” Dream simply replies with a shrug and a tiny, amused smile.

“So whose idea is this loop?”

“Tommy, Tubbo, and Charlie’s.”

“That...actually explains a bunch of aspects in this loop.”

Quackity pants as he lays flat on the ground in a bush, his muscles ached from running, exhaustion creeping into his muscles as the adrenaline faded away.

The town’s folk wielded pitchforks and torches as they searched for the newly escaped Quackity, a being that they believed to be an angel that had fallen from God’s light.

He bites down on his hand to hide his sobs, mourning over the fact that he could no longer be in the sky as his wings were clipped and weak, no longer of use and nothing more than a painful reminder of what he could no longer do, which was to fly.

The marchings of feet pounding against dirt grew distant and distant, carrying with them their angered shouts and chants to “kill the Fallen!”.

With great hesitation, he shakily gets up to take a look outside his bush. He is alone again, in the middle of the woods in the dark with nothing but his dirtied shirt and suspenders.

Despite his instincts screaming at him to hide and run, he pushes against them and steps out. He needed to get away, but where? Where would he even go? Humans have proven themselves to be dangerous countless times over, unaccepting and fully against the supernatural.

Humans would rather kill what they couldn’t understand than try to learn.

Quackity jumps and lets out a yelp when he feels something brush up against his legs before slapping a hand over his mouth and looking down.

Two cats pay him no mind as they continue to rub their bodies against his feet, loudly purring in content. The cats felt strange to him, one being too soft while the other felt too hard. The stars that scattered across the night sky did little to help his limited vision.

The cats then walked away, side by side, their tails intertwining with the other as they strolled deeper in the woods. Quackity would have thought that they got bored of him due to him not giving them attention if they hadn’t stopped to look back at him and meow loudly.

Quackity blinks as he stares back at the cats, who meow again. “Do...you want me to follow you?”

Another meow.

Quackity slowly stepped forward, the cats watched him and when he got close, they matched his speed and moved forward to wherever they were leading him. The slow walk progressively sped into a casual one as the foliage around them thickened, yet somehow there was a clear enough path for him and the cats to walk through without trouble. He fails to notice that the colors and appearances of this part of the forest are darker, the trees all around him dead with their leaves dry yet somehow still firmly attached to the branches they've grown from.

“Where are we going?” As expected, another meow. Then they suddenly turned a sharp right and jumped into a bush. Quackity flinches at the sudden speed of motion then quickly pushes the leaves aside to follow his companions.

What he sees is where the forest he’s in ends and where the ground begins to rise to form a massive hill. In between, separating the forest’s end and the mountain’s start, black fences that end in sharp points stand tall and menacing, casting a shadow over the winged humanoid.

Quackity’s eyes pan down to his feline friends, surprised to see them just pass through as if the fences aren't real. Is it an illusion then?

He steps closer to the fence with a hand stretched out, hesitating when he gets close, but then decides to rush through. He stumbles to the other side in surprise, then once he gets his balance, he turns back to the fence, finding it strange that now he can see the moon's light bouncing off of it when it didn't when he was outside the fence. Quackity's brows furrow in confusion and reaches for it again.

His heart sinks when he can feel the cold steel of the large fence. Before he could properly freak out over the fact that he's trapped, the cats got his attention with another meow before walking up the mountain’s path. Now unsure but having no idea what else to do, he follows after the cats as he looks around his surroundings. Nothing but pebbles and grass can be seen, at first. The higher up they went, the more he realized that this mountain isn't normal. Animated skeletons and corpses aimlessly stumble about, some with weapons, some without. Clouds of what he assumes are made of ash float just as aimlessly as the others, though their movement might be influenced by the small gusts of cold wind that periodically blows over them.

When he nears the top is when he can clearly see the dark outline of a large structure, and he stops to a halt, the cats doing the same to turn back to see Quackity frozen in shock.

“Tha-...you- I-...” The cats tilt their heads at him, and they both scramble to the side as Quackity runs up the rest of the way to the structure, hoping with all of his being that it was what he thinks it is. The double doors are much larger than his form, but he pays them no mind as he slams himself against it and starts banging at the entrance.

“Hello?! Please! I mean no harm!” Quackity desperately yells out as he continues to bang his fists against the gargantuan doors.

He can only hope that the occupants inside will hear his plea, but with the reputation this building has, one that he recognizes as the Mansion of Marionettes, that’s all he can do. Hope and pray that they answer and help him.

Wilbur, for many years, has done nothing but live in his lonely castle where he repeats his daily rituals of feeding and amusing himself with about anything that comes to mind through each night.

And with each passing night, a void opens around his heart that seems to increase with each rising of the moon and with each sight of couples holding each other in their arms.

He remembers a distant memory of his beloved human father, Phil. No matter how deranged and cold Wilbur was after his transformation, his father stood firmly by his side, despite the fact that he himself was a priest whose task was to vanquish unholy creatures such as Wilbur.

He remembers that tragic night, the vampire begging for Phil on his deathbed to let him perform the ritual so that he too would live forever, but his father refused. With the last of his strength, the elderly father cups his son’s cheek, Wilbur takes the hand into his own. Phil whispers for him to let him rest, a weak smile on his face as he wipes a stray tear from his son’s pale face with a bony thumb.

As much as it pained the vampire, he gave a single slow nod, gripping his frail hand tighter while being mindful of his own strength. Phil, the townsfolk’s most beloved priest, passed away in his sleep, finally finished in serving his time as God's servant, and now resting in the holy land of Heaven.

A place Wilbur cannot go to follow.

Since then, he has read the letters his father left behind, all of which were addressed to him and that remained closed until it was Phil’s time.

They all were written with such love that the lone vampire grew to crave more of it in any form, the blood of those who show and share the emotion not enough to satiate his desire for that craving.

A craving that Phil left him alone with.

Decades have passed and the people who personally knew Phil have died, their children maturing and having children of their own. The name of Phil is now a mere story that is shared by those in the church as an example of a good and righteous man.

“He was more than just a good and righteous man. He was my father.” Wilbur thought bitterly as he hid within the shadows to peer inside the church, wondering why Phil would want to be so devoted to serving the being that took him away to a place he will never enter.

The sour bitterness has fogged his mind to forget about his thirst for the warm feeling of love. That too didn’t last long once he killed all those who worked for the church that is now left untouched and abandoned, its holy energy no longer present.

Oh, how he wishes to destroy it, just seeing the very sight of it mocked him of what he dearly cares for but could no longer reach as his father was within the grasps of Death who he discovered is his mother through the letters that Phil left behind. Despite that, he could not be angry at the mother he never met, no, as it iss her task to whisk the souls of the dead away.

Her task that’s been given to her by her father, God.

It is all His fault.

Now, more time has passed in a blur as he silently walks down the familiar gravel path that leads to the now dust-collecting church. He expected no one to be there, so imagine his surprise to find a figure in a black dress and with a head of flowing blond hair.

The figure appears to be flying by the strings attached to their limbs, the strings themselves appearing out from some kind of magic gateway above the stranger.

They stand before a withered tree and waves a hand at it, causing the snag to start to break the soil under and around it, letting itself be pulled into another gateway that opens above it, leaving only an area of disturbed earth behind.

That was the night he encountered that strange supernatural, and the nights after were spent talking to them.

He found out later on that his name is Dream from a book of old stories, and he is the Reanimator. No wonder he felt drawn to him, the aura of death surrounding this blond man lures Wilbur into a sense of familiarity, which then turned into companionship, and perhaps more, with each walk under the stars,

Ever since then, the void his chest filled, and it would clench every time Dream had to go back to his home before sunrise. Something bloomed between them, he is sure of it.

Then, a night came where he didn’t show up, just a letter was left where he first appeared to take a dead tree. It was a letter of temporary farewell, informing him that Dream has matters that needed his attention.

Wilbur, at first, waited for the return of Dream, but after nearly half a decade passed, he no longer had the patience to continue to wait. He had promised himself that he will not let go of his love for Dream like how he did with Phil. There are very few immortals such as himself, and now that he has found companionship in another, he is not willing to let go.

Whether the fates desire it or not, they are meant to be together and stay throughout time.

The doors groan, causing Quackity to freeze, then quickly take a step back as the entrance slowly opens to him, light blinding him for a few moments.

Once his eyes adjust, he sees a grand room of beige and golds, the granite tiles shining under the light of a large chandelier. At the very back of the gargantuan foyer is a large staircase that leads to a platform, which is connected to two other flights of stairs that go either side. Red carpet decorates the steps, the foyer itself being open with few decorations of paintings, weaponry, armory, and sculptors of various materials all arranged and spaced out.

Quackity lets out a breath of amazement as he takes in on the grand scenery. He hears the sound of tapping and faint thumping which causes him to look down in front of him and see the two cats that led him to find this mansion, sitting on the floor.

The creatures are cats in shape, but that’s where the similarities of the real and fake end. One looks to be made out of green marble while the other looks to be made of black and white fabric. Their respective marble and button eyes remain unblinking as they stare up at him.

Suddenly, they got up and ran down two separate hallways, one filled with other sculptures, the other filled with varying dolls and toys.

Quackity had absolutely no time to react when a colony of bats came and knocked him down as they forced their way in, their screechings echoing around the mansion.

The doors shut behind him once every last bat has entered, and now Quackity is on the floor, bracing himself as the bats above him rapidly fly in an unknown central point, forming an infamous vampire that the winged human hoped to never encounter.

Letting out chirps of distress, he crawls forward, his efforts put into an abrupt halt as Wilbur harshly stomps a foot onto his back, right between his shoulder blades. Quackity’s wings flap uselessly behind him as he shakes in fear upon hearing the vampire above him hiss.

Quackity can only shield himself with his arms as he tightly shuts his eyes from the fear, and a second later, he feels pain as Wilbur digs his nails into his forearms, forcefully parting them from his neck and head. His wings twitched and shook in terror when he felt a cold breath against his neck.

Just as Wilbur’s about to bite down and drain the avian before him dry of his blood in rage and jealousy, strings suddenly lunge at them from above, tangling themselves around both males and forcefully parts them away.

Quackity draws in a large and shaky breath upon realizing the distance between him and his would-be murderer. Even the mere sight of the vampire frightens him, his reputation in the supernatural world known to many for his deeds against the holy and religious.

Wilbur lets out a growl through clenched teeth, body shaking in fury upon seeing the man within his love’s mansion. What business does he have with Dream? Is he the reason why he left? Is he trying to play the hero and take him away to the afterlife? These thoughts only seem to fuel his hatred as he glowers at the quivering man in front of him.

“Enough!” A booming voice says from the staircase. Both men look up at Dream in all of his stunningly intimidating glory, along with four other males flanking his sides. Quackity would have dropped and bowed down before the Reanimator and his family to show respect if it weren't for the strings wrapped around him, almost slicing through his skin by how tightly they held him in place. Wilbur, on the other hand, relaxed as he clings onto the strings closest to his arms, great joy on his face at seeing Dream after all these nights alone, traveling and searching from mountain to mountain just to be with him again.

“...Wilbur,” Dream says with disappointment dripping from his voice. He holds his hand up to the vampire before he could utter a word. “I shall speak with you later.” More strings appear to wrap around Wilbur’s jaws to keep him quiet as the strings holding his body drag him through the air and up the stairs. The green eyes of the mansion’s master followed his form until he is no longer in view, disappearing into a corridor on the second floor

Those glowing eyes then turn to Quackity, who has stayed quiet for the entire ordeal. His wings tug themselves closer to his back when he’s forced to float to the center of the foyer, now being watched by the mansion's inhabitants.

“And you,” Dream and the family floats down until they are practically surrounding him. “Speak your name and purpose here, avian.”

He takes a deep breath in and out to calm his senses as best as he could before answering, “Q-quackity, and I-I…-”

“If I may, Father,” The one Quackity assumes is the Toymaker speaks up with his palm raised up to his shoulder to catch the Reanimator's attention, who nods as he waves at his son to continue. “It was Tommy and I who led him here. We sensed potential and would like to test him.”

Now that wasn’t a good sign. Quackity can practically feel his heart pounding against his chest as he looks at Ranboo with wide eyes. “Yeah, we saw what happened and thought maybe it’s time for another.” His head whirls around to look at Tommy, feeling a sense of familiarity upon looking at the blond teen's face.

Quackity gazes back to Dream when he hummed, then immediately looked down when he made eye contact with him.

“Very well. You may test him. I’ll deal with the vampire.”

“Alright! So,” Tommy claps his hands together as he stands before Quackity who is forced to sit down on a stool. “Oi, can you not slouch and shake, big Q?”

The teen watches Quackity freeze as he really gives him a look, recognition slowly feeling his eyes. “Tu-Tommy?”

Of course, how couldn’t he have recognized Tommy? He was one of the few in the village that cared less about his race and treated him...how he treated his friends, which was questionable with his loud and somewhat aggressive attitude, but that’s just Tommy. He went missing and has remained missing up until now.

Apart from the blacksmith outfit that has spots of soot and ash on it, he looks to have gained some muscle despite being held up by strings. His yellow hair was a shade darker from dirt, and his eyes were now a steely blue than the bright blue that Quackity associated him with.

“Yup, it’s me, big Q. Told ya my talents are the best,” Tommy spoke with pride as he extended his arms out to the forge around him. Metallic mannequins walked around, some sorting weapons and armor into various storage rooms, others working in the forge itself.

“Bu-but how?” Quackity stammers as he looks around the area with wide eyes.

“My buddy Tubbo was the one that got the Reanimator interested in me. You remember Tubbo, right? The kid that has a weird thing for bees?”

A little bubble of a memory surfaces in his head and it shows a young boy with a little gap between his teeth as he runs around chasing after bees and sometimes offers flower crowns to a beehive by setting them down and around the tree that the hive is occupying. Quackity gives Tommy a nod.

“Well, we’ve been looking for another addition to the family and from what I can remember,” Tommy leans to the side, making it known that he’s looking at the pathetic and broken wings behind the avian’s back. “Our old town hates the supernatural.”

The strings pull Tommy to be vertical once he’s finished examining Quackity’s wings. “I’m gonna give you two options here, big Q. Either you A, you leave and never come back, or B, you join the family. We'll even fix up your wings and give you a family to call your own. Think about it.”

And with that, Tommy floats to a table where a suit of armor is laid down. Quackity stares at Tommy’s back as he digests his conversation with the boy he thought would never see again.

From what little he knows of the mansion, the Reanimator is the head of the household and everyone else are considered his children that are experts in their talent, and all of them specialize in some form of lifeforce manipulation that the Reanimator blessed them with.

The Reanimator can animate the dead, and the Sculptor and Dollmaker can give life to their creations, and that’s about it. He doesn’t know what Tubbo’s powers are but from a quick glance, his guess is that he’s an artist? A painter? And Tommy is a blacksmith, or since he’s part of the mansion, he’s the Blacksmith.

Tommy’s strings suddenly start shaking and trembling, which catches Quackity’s attention. The blond teen turns to look at him as he places down what looks to be a glowing red metal stick, and from the gloves that Tommy wore, he guesses that it’s hot. “Father will be seeing me. You should have your answer by then, big Q. He can be very impatient.”

And with that, a gateway opens above him and the strings pull him through it. It closes and disappears, leaving Quackity alone with a bunch of animated armor sets in the Blacksmith’s forge.

Dream takes a leisurely stroll down a corridor, his own strings hanging limply around his body as they shine and shimmer under the moonlight. Behind him is Wilbur, who so dearly wishes to be close to the one he sees as his precious love but can’t as the strings won't allow him to touch their master.

“I did not expect to see you here in my mansion. How awfully rude of you to barge in uninvited.” Dream speaks in a delicate voice, the presence surrounding him demanding respect yet Wilbur remains ignorant to it as a gentle smile spreads from across his face. “I am sorry, my love, but I could not wait any longer.”

He lets out a ‘tsk’ as he stops and turns to face the strung-up vampire. “Quite the impatient suitor you are, Wilbur.” At that, the pale man turns away with a hint of shape, but sharp nails find themselves under his chin to force him to look at the Reanimator. “However, I will forgive you this time, if you can do one task for me.”

Wilbur gives him a single nod, the feeling of sharp nails lightly digging into his skin sends chills throughout his body. Dream finally gives him a smile that he has craved since they first saw each other after nearly a decade.

“In the woods, there are a group of hunters who desire to see me. Weaken them for me and bring them here, alive.”

And after a few more words are exchanged, Wilbur is off to do what he asked. Dream looks out of the open window and watches the colony of bats disappear off in the distance, and at that moment, he commands his strings to carry him to Tommy's forge to meet with Quackity, and the strings oblige.

Tommy drops from an opened gateway into Tubbo's art studio where he sees a large table that's been cleared of any brushes and paints. Charlie is molding a piece of clay in his hands while Ranboo idly sews a nearly finished doll that reminds him of Purpled, both of which are waiting for Tommy and Tubbo. There are two vacant wooden chairs around the table, and Tommy floats over to take his. Tubbo just about enters with several floating canvases following him from behind. "Hey Tommy! We were waiting for you."

Tubbo takes a sit before asking, "How's Quackity?"

"Still thinking about it," Tommy answers as he takes off his gloves. "So what's the meeting about that didn't need Dream's attention?"

"Well," Tubbo waves a hand at the floating canvases lined behind him, each one having a moving painting that shows forests and seas. Charlie and Ranboo stop whatever they're doing to look at the animated pictures. "We couldn't find Phil because he's dead, but I did find the other guys."

The paintings show them many people, such as Punz and Purpled huddled together in an abandoned farmhouse and Puffy sailing alone at sea. Too bad there aren't any sounds as Ranboo hasn't been able to get his toys to their locations as of right now. "Dream says that he's going after George, Sapnap, and Ant. I just called this meeting to agree on who gets dibs with which target."

Charlie waves his hand up in the air. "Can I have Ponk?" The other three look a each other before Tubbo shrugs. "Sure. We're not as interested in him anyway."

"Hey, Tommy. Wanna swap targets? I wanna see how I do with Sam and Niki." Ranboo says before Tommy can decide. The Blacksmith thinks it over and shrugs, "Okay. Then I guess Punz and Purpled are mine."

"Then I'll go after Eret and Puffy," Tubbo says while slamming his hands against the table as he stands, even though he didn't need to because of the strings pulling him up. "Good luck on your roles, everyone!"

And with that, the meeting is adjourned, Tommy deciding to head back to his forge to check on Quackity who he's sure is now alone with Dream. He hopes that he hasn't shat his pants with how anxious he has been throughout his time here in the mansion because things might just get a lot worse from here.

Chapter Text

As they planned, they slowly eased Dream into the role of villain, not just by one task at a time, but by entire loops as well.

It’s painstakingly slow in Tommy’s opinion but they really needed to make this work if they’re serious about getting Dream to join them in their villain arc.

And from what they figured out over the loops while trying to convince Dream, they didn’t have to go and destroy everything to get a good ending, they just have to do more harm than good, and that harm doesn’t always have to be physical.

This loop is an example of that, and perhaps one of the more excitable ones as it really shows their progress with Dream.

Tommy manages to wrangle Wilbur’s declining mental health to be as decent as he can get it to be as he can’t entirely rely on the Admin to help him because he's preparing some codes to save Schlatt from a heart attack and from multiple people trying to kill him after the Manberg-Pogtopia war. Then there’s the fact that he’s trying to get in contact with Phil, Puffy, and Foolish to get them to join around the same time Techno joins.

Tubbo has been given leather gloves with too OP enchantments (in Tommy’s opinion) by Dream that can protect his hands for whenever he decides to literally punch a three-by-three hole in a concrete wall and assert his dominance that he could and can kill the entire cabinet if he wanted to if they don’t treat him as their equal.

Then came the night when Dream had to wait for everyone to go to sleep at once and begin, what Ranboo likes to call, memory editing. Essentially, he’s using his Admin abilities to slightly and carefully swap and change the memories of anyone he chooses in the server without anybody suspecting that there was anything wrong.

Why is he doing this? Ranboo said that it would make this loop more relaxing, and feel loved at the same time. It took a bit of convincing, but they got Dream on board with it, not knowing the shenanigans they have planned that are mostly harmless.

Mostly.

At least for the first portion of the plan.

The dawn of the 16th rises and war breaks out, with Dream obviously fighting with Manberg, and instead of having two dead leaders, they have two people that are going to be watched over by Puffy to rehabilitate them thanks to Tommy watching over Wilbur, disabling the button, and leading Phil into the button room to talk Wilbur into surrendering peacefully, and Dream for healing Schlatt before he could die from a heart attack.

Techno, thankfully, never had any soulsand or wither skulls in his inventory, and he still stuck around, and nobody minded.

In place of Pandora’s Vault is a rehab center with no name, just called Rehab Center.

Everything seems to be going well. Phil staying in L’Manberg to be with his son, Techno living on a mountain that gave him a clear view of the nation but would often visit, Tubbo now made president and speaking with Eret to be in better relations the Greater SMP, Schlatt may or may not getting all fatherly with Dream with each visit from him to make sure he's doing alright, Puffy challenging the ex-president’s new status as Dream’s parental figure while also being his therapist, Dream bonding with Foolish as they build roads to connect the different nations that may or may not cause a sibling rivalry with Sapnap as Dream’s brother, overall, a found family arc, according to Ranboo.

There’s also the new nation that Quackity’s been building as he didn’t feel comfortable with LManberg and Dream SMP anymore, but is willing to make alliances with said nations once Las Nevdas is established. Oddly enough, the area he chose to build it is a desert that would occasionally snow. Despite the strange conditions of the area, everything seems to be going as normal as it can be on the server.

Once everything has settled down and everyone got along with everyone else (with Dream being the most liked) while others (Schlatt and Wilbur) are released from rehab and are encouraged by Puffy to visit her anytime, followed by days of absolutely no conflict, this was where the fun begins.

Phil gently pushes Wilbur out of the house to make friends and amends, followed by Tommy harshly shoving him to where Tubbo is currently taking a break in L'Manpark (yes, that is the name of the park, it's a running joke that everything unnamed in the nation starts with 'L'Man') to talk with Quackity by giving some advice about running a nation. There was some awkwardness between the two, but Tommy managed to get them both to talk to each other with his loud manly skills as socializing. It ended gloriously and now Wilbur is a citizen to Las Nevadas, helping Quackity develop the country as well as giving tips here and there.

Currently, Quackity and Wilbur are mining out a large space under the Las Nevadas restaurant that Wilbur's going to be working in when they come across Charlie, who purposefully planted himself where he needed to be as building locations don’t always match with the original timeline.

Instead of hostility, Charlie is met with confusion as both men look between themselves and back at him with wide eyes and question marks flying all around their heads. Charlie gives them a wide smile and an enthusiastic wave, “Hello Quackity from Las Nevadas and Wilbur from L’Manberg!”

Quackity is the first to break out of their stunned silence.

“What the fuck-”

Dream has his face and mask pressed against the kitchen table as Phil walks over to him with a bowl of soup in hand. Outside, they can faintly hear Schlatt and Puffy having an unofficial custody battle on who gets to have parental rights over Dream.

The Admin lets out a heavy sigh, then feels a hand patting him afterward. “Want me to try and stop them?”

Phil watches as Dream tilts his head to look at him, and even with his white mask covering his features, he can very much tell that Dream is glaring at him. “You’re going to join them, Phil.”

“He’s right, you know.” Called out Techno from the living room, most likely reading a book written by Sun Tzu. Phil lets out a chuckle, not even bothering to defend himself. After all, he’s prone to adopting people he grows to be very close with, and since he’s practically ancient and will continue to live for who knows how long, that’s going to be everyone on the server soon. Tommy, his newest adopted son, is willing to bet on that.

If hearing Schlatt and Puffy arguing outside weren’t annoyingly flattering enough, everyone’s schedules aligned and the entire server is in L’Manberg as the nation has become a neutral ground for all other nations, and it’s bigger and more developed compared to the Community House or Greater SMP.

“Hello, excuse me, sorry,” Wilbur says to those around him as he slowly pushes his way to Phil’s house. Coincidentally, Dream just got a message in his communicator from Tubbo asking if he wanted to meet up with him and his platonic husband who purposefully remained out of sight from the rest of the SMP like Charlie to make the reactions all the better and, according to Tommy, a thousand times funnier.

Just as Dream is stepping out of the door with very little clue as to what’s going on like the rest of the server, Charlie, a new and unrecognized face by the non-loopers that sticks out from the rest of the crowd and is currently tailing Quackity and Wilbur, suddenly flings his arms up high into the air and yells out, “Mom!”

Every form of interaction, including Schlatt and Puffy’s rather loud argument, suddenly quiets down, the only sounds are of Charlie’s footsteps racing towards the still form of Dream, completely ignoring the people he bumps into. Instinctively, Dream catches Charlie as he tries to remember if the teens ever mentioned anything about their plans.

Tubbo and Ranboo have just arrived with their son (that they managed to find way earlier on) at the scene of shocked onlookers in the middle of L’Manberg and immediately, without a second thought, Ranboo waves at Dream to catch his attention and smiles widely. ”Brother Dream!”

Ranboo's words are met with another round of stunned silence, only this time, Sapnap and Foolish felt a little pang in their chest at finding out that Dream has another brother that he never mentioned.

It was at that moment, that Dream remembered what the plan was (or part of the plan at least) and played along for their sake. “Hey, Ranboo. Long time no see.”

“Is that your son?”

“Yup, his name’s Charlie.”

“This is Michael. He’s our son.”

“WHAT-!" Of course, with the sudden reveal, Dream took center stage in front of Phil’s house and told them a fabricated story that he made on the spot of how he adopted a slime mob that later decided that he wanted to explore the world and how he and Ranboo are indeed blood-related brothers, but an incident happened that caused them to lose their memories of their early lives, and for Ranboo, forget things easily.

“-and, yeah. I think that’s about it,” Dream sheepishly rubs the back of his neck, “I never mentioned them because, well, it was a secret until we were comfortable enough to share it.”

He feels a hint of guilt upon seeing the looks of hurt on Puffy, Sapnap, and a bit in Schlatt and Foolish’s expressions in the sea of shocked and surprised ones, and rightfully so, Dream thinks. He has grown close to them in particular, even confiding in more private conversations with them that usually ended in him crying.

They were memories of when he was in prison. It can be too much at times and he needed someone to vent who aren’t one of the loopers, and as much as he wants to, he couldn’t bring himself to say the names of those who hurt him, no matter how much Tommy offers to plant false evidence to point every trauma as true in the current timeline, even if it never happened.

Suddenly, Tubbo shouts from the very back of the crowd. “WAIT! I’m married to Ranboo! That makes me his brother-in-law! Beat that, bossman!”

Right next to him, Tommy gives his best friend a scowl. His eyes travel over to Wilbur and he points a finger at him, causing the ex-revolutionary leader to put his hands up in surprise. “Wilbur, when are you going to make a fuckin’ move? I’m pretty sure our dad is going to adopt him and by then that’s going to be ince-”

“TOMMY!” Wilbur screams out, his face a clear shade of red as he childishly stomps his foot and glares at his adoptive brother.

Despite being cut off, the teen just keeps on going and making the situation worse. “Actually, didn’t Techno mention getting platonically married to Dream once?”

“Bruh, that was a joke-”

“But wait,” Tubbo looks between Wilbur and Fundy who's somewhere in the crowd. “I thought it was Fundy who was going to marry Dream?”

“Wait wha-”

“Tubbo don’t encourage this-”

“No no no, Tubbo has a point, but I have a better idea. Wilbur, simp for Quackity instead, Phil, hurry up and adopt him, I wanna be Dream’s brother ‘cause it’s a step up to being a brother-in-law.”

“Wouldn't it be beneficial for Dream to marry Fundy? Foxes are monogamous, so if Dream ever turns into a ghost, he'll stay faithful.” Ranboo adds out of nowhere.

It is safe to say that everyone either found the situation embarrassing or amusing as Tommy, Tubbo, and Ranboo continue to debate over Dream's relations as they completely ignore the protests and sputters of those they mention.

Though someone got a victory from it at the very least. “FUCK YEAH! Dream we’re in-laws!” Shouts Schlatt from somewhere in the crowd, now just remembering that he adopted Tubbo a few weeks ago.

Since that day of Dream’s family reveal, practically everyone can tell that the teens are up to something and somehow got Punz and Purpled involved (probably by paying them) into their schemes of hooking Fundy up with Dream.

Much to the people’s surprise, Fundy is romantically interested in Dream, which then got them to question if the rest of what Tommy and Tubbo were saying were true.

(“Yes, I did tell Dream that I would platonically marry him, no, I’m wasn't actually going to platonically marry him.” Techno said with an annoyed huff. "It was a joke to get him to finally rid him of his homelessness." He ignores the sputters of denial in the background.

“No, I wasn’t interested in Dream, we’re just friends,” Wilbur says with a blush across his face as he locks fingers with Quackity like the closeted simp that he is.

“Actually, yes, I was looking to adopt him,” Phil admits with a shrug and a grin that grew bigger upon hearing Techno groaning in the background about him and his chronic adoption problem. “Though because Fundy's is probably going to marry him, I'm not going to since I'm going to be his grandfather-in-law by then.”)

And now the day came where Dream and Fundy are to marry with Tommy as the flower boy throwing flowers, some minerals and rocks (“Tommy what the fuck!?” Ponk exclaimed while holding his nose after a diamond hit him square in the face), and an entire stack of flowers onto George, for some reason. Ranboo somehow kept a straight face the entire time as he trails behind Tommy while holding the wedding rings.

Puffy is the one who walks Dream down the aisle with Eret as the wedding officiant. The suit and dress worn by the groom and bride are thanks to Niki who spent god knows how long getting them perfect with assistance from the elusive Exdee (hah) to bless the clothes so that they shimmer under the light, and they both look like royalties, all they need are crowns and they'd be perfect in this large and over-the-top church and wedding that practically the entire server took part in preparing.

....what? It makes what happens after all the more painful for the server.

Tommy never really got the chance to eat the food that Ranboo, Wilbur, Tubbo, and Quackity made when they were having their restaurant rivalry in the first timeline but now that it’s here, he can get a taste, and it’s pretty good! The same can be said with Niki, Bad, and Skeppy’s baking.

The party after is probably one of the most fun they’ve had since these loops started that didn't involve anyone getting hurt, so much so that they temporarily forgot that they had plans to execute after all this is done and dealt with.

Even if they did somehow remember through all the chaos, they want people to have their days of peace before they get started.

…..

Okay so maybe they spent a couple of weeks letting people be happy, but Dream was happy with Fundy so they just left the newly married couple be until the time is right.

And that time came in the form of Fundy going off somewhere for a surprise for Dream, and that is where they begin their plans.

Techno and Phil noticed that Dream has been getting busier and busier with each passing day, coming back more tired than the last time.

They either see him with Charlie sticking to his mother’s side or hear that he’s been called in by the president and Ranboo.

Tommy has since been pulling away from Wilbur and is also sticking with Dream, and when confronted about it, he just shrugs and says that he wanted to hang out with him more.

When Techno thought that things were getting too suspicious for his liking, coupled with the fact that Chat has been making good points and observations for once such as when they pointed out that Dream’s mask has another minuscule crack on it and how he seems to be slightly limping, he decided to corner Dream before he can leave Phil’s house.

“Alright nerd. What’s going on?”

“Nothing. I’m just busy with keeping the server running. Admin stuff and all.”

“Well do you think you can do it while taking breaks, mate? And Techno, can you not corner him?” Phil asks from across the house, most likely in the kitchen cleaning up the table as they just recently finished lunch.

“Can’t. It’s… urgent.”

“I’m pretty sure whatever it is can wait until you’ve rested,” Techno says with a huff as he crosses his arms to level Dream with a look of mild exasperation and concern.

“But-”

“Dream, I will hit you with this chair until you fall asleep.”

“Techno, mate, don’t.”

Dream remains silent as he weighs out his options while meeting Techno’s slightly challenging gaze. The Admin is the first to break by closing his eyes (not that Techno would know as he still as his mask on) and letting in a deep breath in and out as he takes out his communicator and begins rapidly typing away. The piglin hybrid raises a brow but does not say anything.

“Techno? Did you do something? Why is it suddenly quiet?”

“No, he’s just using his communicator.”

“Mom!” Charlie loudly says as he slams the front door open. Techno turns to him with an unimpressed stare, yet Charlie ignores it, focusing entirely on Dream. “Mom! I found hot water in a hole!”

“You mean a hot spring?”

“Yeah! Whatever that is. Do you want to go there with me?”

“Maybe-”

“Mate, it sounds great! You should go!” Phil, once again, yells from the kitchen with the sounds of running water and plates clinking against other plates. Before Dream has a chance to protest to his grandfather-in-law, Techno is shoving him towards the human with green slime patches on his skin and unceremoniously closes the door on the both of them, unknowingly sealing Dream’s part of the loop’s script.

Wilbur and Quackity were giving Schlatt, the new resident of Las Nevadas, a tour around the nation when they saw Dream running from the long stretches of the desert without his mask on. The sight of scars and cuts on the beloved Admin’s maskless face raised red flags in the trio’s heads, especially when Dream rushes past them and immediately stumbles and trips face-first onto the road.

They all flinch out of their shock and run over to the fallen and bleeding man. “Dream!? The fuck happened to ya, kid?” Schlatt lands harshly on his knees and turns Dream over to his side, horrified to find a large slash across his midsection.

Schlatt curses as he takes off his suit jacket and folds it into a messy bundle, then proceeds to press it against the open gash to slow the bleeding. Wilbur immediately starts typing away his communicator to get Sam, Ponk, Bad, and Phil to Las Nevadas while explaining that it’s an emergency while Quackity runs to go and get Foolish.

On the casino’s rooftop, Ranboo, Tubbo, Charlie, and the ghost of Dream are laying on their stomachs, each with a spyglass in hand as they watch the panic unfold.

“See, Dream? Doesn’t that make you feel warm inside?” Tubbo comments as he watches Tommy pilot Dream’s body into sitting up, only for the two remaining adults with him to force him back down, the puddle of blood spreading to Schlatt’s knees, hands, and Wilbur’s feet. “Don’t you wanna see how far you can take this?”

“I’m-” Dream puts his spyglass down, “-still not sure if I’m alright with this, Tubs.” He looks down from the edge to see Quackity running back towards his bleeding body with Foolish right behind him. “But I guess I'll admit that it does feel nice, being taken care of, I mean.”

“Think of it as a form of revenge,” Ranboo lowers his own spyglass to look at Dream over Tubbo. “Instead of forcing them to go through pain, they’re making themselves go through it. It’s not your fault if they lose sleep over something you can very easily heal from.”

Strange logic, but it makes Dream go silent as he stares at the scene below them with an unreadable expression. The villains can take it as a win. Ranboo lifts his spyglass up and watches the scene once more, seeing Foolish crash down then immediately starts using his magic to close the severe wound on Dream’s torso.

“You can go, bossman. You don’t have to watch this if you’re uncomfortable with it.” Tubbo reassures him while slinging a hand on Dream, patting and rubbing circles on his back then retracting his hand and placing it back on the spyglass.

Dream hums and gives a single slow nod before he goes invisible, to where, they’re not sure, but Charlie can tell them if he finds him again.

Dream floats over to the little crowd just outside the door that his body is being kept in. Bad, Sam, and Techno firmly stand in front of Sapnap, George, and Punz from the door behind them, refusing to let them in.

“Out of the way, Sam! We need to see Dream,” Sapnap says through gritted teeth. The mentioned creeper hybrid lets out a frustrated sigh as he levels the server’s resident hothead with a look. “Once he’s awake and healed, then you can see him. You’re just going to distract the others from doing their job.”

Dream quickly pulls himself back into his emergency bedroom, the voice of Sam reminding too much of when he’s deep into his warden persona. The argument between Sapnap and Sam is muffled now, enough for him to block them out and focus on Phil, Ponk, and Foolish that are working together to stabilize the injuries inflicted on his body. He was never given any details as to what happened (thankfully) and now that he’s up close, he cringes at the sight of numerous deep cuts that are definitely going to scar over once they’ve been healed.

The invisible green ghost stares at Tommy in his body as he tries to sit up while batting hands away with a groan. “Wh-where- wait,” Dream doesn’t think that Tommy is putting actual effort into pretending to be him, or maybe that’s the point? He’s not sure. “Shit, alright, okay, this is fine.” His body swings its legs over to the side of the bed despite the protests coming from Ponk and Foolish.

Phil is the one that steps forward and forcefully keeps Dream’s body from standing by placing gentle yet firm hands onto his shoulders. Instead of scowling and throwing curses around like Dream predicted Tommy would do at being stopped, he instead sees him stare up at the winged man in annoyance.

“Dream, your wounds haven’t healed yet. Whatever it is can wait.” Phil sternly says with an undertone of worry. That worry became evident in his expression when Dream’s body didn't move or say anything. Dream didn’t notice that it got silent outside the room until the door opened.

“So this is where you’ve been,” Says a low voice in a neutral tone from the door. The three healers in the room turn to see Ranboo standing in the doorway with a blank and unreadable expression, the unconscious bodies of those who have been outside arguing are now sprawled on the floor behind him. Little specks of red decorate his claws and face.

Ponk and Foolish stilled with shock and confusion while Phil tensed at the sight of Techno being one of those defeated on the floor. They’ve met Ranboo a few times, seeing him as a quiet and comforting presence that’s a delight to be around. Now, however, the air around him is drastically different.

“We’re not quite done yet, so if you could please stand aside and let me have my brother, then it would certainly make things easier and quicker.” A step forward following Ranboo’s demand causes Phil to draw a sword out, his wings spread apart to cover the enderman hybrid’s view of the injured body behind him.

“He hasn’t healed yet! He needs to heal!” The feathers in the Angel of Death’s wings puff out in his anger, appearing much bigger to intimidate Ranboo as his parental instincts make his grip onto the sword’s handle tighten, head screaming to defend his hurt flockmate.

“That doesn’t matter.”

Dream finds himself backing up into a wall, half phased through. He completely removes himself from the scene when the tension became too much for him, though oddly enough, he found it comforting that people cared for him this much, even if it’s temporary and through manipulation.

Floating out of the extra house that is being used as a clinic for his body’s recovery, he soars high up into the air where he can see the entirety of Las Nevadas, but even then, he goes even higher until he has reached past the clouds.

He takes a deep breath in and lets white wisps appear and swirl around him as he takes on one of many forms of Exdee. His cloaks gently flows despite the strong gust of wind that surrounds him. The large pair of wings behind him spread out, momentarily blocking the sun’s light as he descended down back to the ground, casting a large shadow as he went.

Time to cause some harmless mischief to hopefully balance out the others’ deeds.

Okay, he’ll admit that it's kind of fun messing with the server, especially listening to George and Foolish try and convince him to help heal his human body that Tommy is no doubt trying to ruin.

It’s also fun watching them piece together some clues that the others have been sprinkling around ever since Ranboo’s failed attempt at getting his body back. He even joined in by giving cryptic hints that caused the people that are familiar with him to pause.

“W-what did you say?”

“Hmm? I didn’t say anything.”

It’s amusing to see George trying to intimidate Exdee when he’s literally towering over him and has more power in this situation.

“Yes, you did! What did you mean by that?”

Exdee’s shoulders slowly rise and fall in a careless shrug as he looks down at George. “What do you think I mean when I say that ‘he’s better off being one with the world’?”

“I-I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking!” Frustration is clear in his voice, and Exdee only gives the little mortal a small smile as he lowers himself down to level with George. “Figure it out yourself, George. I can’t always give you the answers that you may or may not wish to hear.”

And with that, Exdee’s powerful wings spread to cover George’s vision and flaps once, causing the colorblind man to close his eyes and brace himself from the strong winds that came with the god’s action. When he opens his eyes again, Exdee is nowhere to be seen.

The ghost of Dream watches his best friend wake up with a jolt in his rented hotel room in Las Nevadas. He glides away to seek out Foolish or maybe the loopers if he can find them.

On a separate tab in the communicator, a private chat titled "Looper Bois™" (it was Charlie's idea) beeped to life. Dream goes into the seemingly endless desert and once he's far enouh that he couldn't see the nation's large buildings, he checks his communicator.

Ranboo: Can someone help me distract Phil? I severely underestimated his dad instincts

Slimecicle: I can help!

Tubbo_: Perfect! While you do that, drop hints!

Slimecicle: Okay Tubbo from L'Manberg!

Tommyinit: Charlie just call us by our names when in chat

Dream looks around the area as he thinks over what he's going to do. Once he decided, he nods to himself then looks down at his communicator.

Dream: Meet up in the base after

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, you don’t have to, big man. We can just take it from here.”

“You can just keep being Exdee for the entire loop and watch.”

The unsure voices of the teens continue on trying to get him to take the backseat, but now that they’re past the part of the plan where Dream’s body doesn’t have to endure any more self-torture and is now properly healed except for some bruises, Dream wordlessly forces Tommy out of his human body and places himself back in. Tommy cringes at the sensations he’s experiencing when being forced out, but doesn’t struggle in the entire process.

“I’m sure. Just tell me what I have to do.”

Despite the trio of teens smiling at him in support, it does not fully show just how excited they are for this window of opportunity that Dream is willingly giving to them.

“Okay, okay, okay, so. Since we’ve been in Las Nevadas for so long, we figured that we’d head back to L’Manberg and have someone see you and I talking in an isolated area like, behind a building or something.” Dream nods along as he listens to Tommy explain to him the plan, happy to see the teen he used to hurt so excitedly in what he’s doing.

“I suppose,” He thinks as he enderpearls his way to L’Manberg with Tommy by his side, “Being victim won’t be so bad.”

Ranboo, Tubbo, and Charlie watch them leave their base and turn towards each other. “What do you think pushed Dream into doing this?”

“Maybe it is because of being Exdee? Whenever he’s him, he acts differently, so maybe his Exdee tendencies carry over to his Dream persona?” Suggests Charlie with a shrug. Tubbo hums in thought as he looks back in the direction where the pair left. “If that’s the case, then we should probably plan more loops to have him be Exdee for longer periods of time.”

“...do you think he this is why acted the way he did in the first timeline? I don’t doubt that he’s a bad person but, do you think we might have pushed him more than what he said? He did take most of the blame when some of it should be on us and the rest of the server.” Ranboo quietly questions as he looks up at the night sky from their base hidden in a mountain, surrounded by a dense forest. Tubbo turns to Ranboo by his side with an unreadable expression. “We’re doing it again, aren’t we?”

Tubbo remains silent as he somehow places a comforting arm across Ranboo’s shoulder despite being shorter than him. “Let’s not think about the past. We can only move forward from there.”

Ranboo gives him a slow and solemn nod. He just hopes that Dream is willing to come and talk to them after this loop. He knows better than anyone about the waves of guilt that come crashing onto a person once the loop resets them into a more…’heroic’ mindset.

Niki and Jack each carried a box of ingredients for the former’s bakery when they hear a hushed conversation of two voices they haven’t heard from in a long while coming from a dark alley of L’Manberg.

Niki’s the one who decides to investigate by peaking around the corner, and she manages to stop herself from gasping out in shock at the scene she witnesses. Dream, without his mask, bruises and scars barely healed and closed, huddled into a tight ball against the wall with Tommy towering over him with his hands held tightly in fists, the teen’s back facing Niki.

“What do you see?” Jack whispers from behind her. Niki lightly kicks his leg and hushes him to keep him quiet.

“Dream, just give me what I want and everything will stop,” Niki can barely hear Tommy say to the Admin, who weakly shakes his head. Tommy reels his fist back and Dream flinches to cover his head.

“STOP!” Niki drops the crater she was holding in favor of her sword. Jack quickly drops his own crate in surprise, but she completely ignores him. “What are you doing!?”

Tommy’s fist immediately relaxes, now extending to Dream as he offers his hand to the fallen Admin. Dream’s green eyes look up at him in confusion then glances at Niki, to which he quickly takes Tommy’s hand and gets up, then he cleans his clothes from wrinkles and dirt. He then looks back up at Niki with a neutral expression, but she isn’t fooled, she can easily see the Admin’s shaking hands that he failed to hide from her view. Tommy casually swings an arm across Dream’s back in a side-hug. “Just helping out my brother, what else?”

“I saw what you did, Tommy. Step away from him.” Niki says in a threatening, her eyes darkening as she points her sword at the teen. Tommy makes a contemplating hum as if Niki’s demands were a question. “No, in fact, we were just on our way.” Niki can see Tommy squeeze Dream’s arm, and he immediately opens a holographic screen in front of him, and she knows what he’s doing.

Quickly switching her sword for a bow, Niki loads an arrow and draws the string back. The arrow hits the wall before it could hit Tommy, the brothers having teleported away. Niki lets out a yell of frustration, much to the amusement of Tommy who’s standing on a rooftop with Dream, both of them invisible.

Niki grabs onto Jack’s arm and she runs down the path to the White House, no doubt to tell Tubbo of what she saw, the two craters left forgotten in the alley.

“So,” Tommy turns to where he assumes Dream is, “Did I do a good job?” He can tell without having to see him that Dream’s nervous. He could be an ass and not answer, but maybe somewhere in the future when their relationship is much better.

“Yeah, big D,” Tommy quietly answers, easily sweeping away Dream’s doubts. “You did amazing.”

The server has been on the hunt for Tommy, Ranboo, and Dream for a good while now. Some decided to just keep guard in their respective nations and its territories while others searched the surrounding forests and biomes. No luck so far.

They did, however, find a clue in the form of an old and dusty room recognized by many as the infamous button room that Phil and Tommy found Wilbur in, the same room that everyone thought was destroyed and uninhabited. The room still has the button, and a certain starved, injured, and unconscious Fundy who’s hugging a book containing journal entries of his quest to find the perfect spot for Dream and him to have a house and be at peace, but not isolated from the rest of the server. The entries then speak of suspicious noises that escalated into being chased, the words a challenge to read as they were written quickly and shakily.

The book tells of Tommy, Tubbo, and Ranboo’s plans to manipulate Charlie into luring Dream and using his powers to control the server, using their familial bond against him. It says, in detail, of the torture done to Fundy, of breaking him to comply with their demands and train him. In between the pages, they can see messy sentences of hope that Dream would be okay, followed by apologies that he couldn’t do anything to stop the ones that were supposed to be family.

Wilbur had been distraught by the news, now staying in the bedroom that Fundy is kept in to watch over him. Schlatt became a shut-in, feeling as if he failed as a father, and thus he and Wilbur bonded over their sorrows. Puffy took it upon herself to watch over the men and fox hybrid while the others were off in making plans to stop the family traitors from just barging into the White House.

They all decide to meet in the upgraded Community House where they wait for Quackity to retrieve the ever-so-oblivious son of Dream, Charlie. Their conversation-

(“Hello, Quackity from Las Nevadas!”

“H-hey, Charlie. Do you wanna follow me for a second?”

“But President Tubbo of L’Manberg said not to follow people.”

“U-uh, well, you’re invited to a meeting with the server.”

“What’s a meeting?”

“It’s where people come to one area to talk.”

“Oh! Like a party? I like parties!”

“N-not really but-”

“I’m going to do drugs and drink alcohol!”

“No no no, Charlie it’s not like tha- Charlie don’t jump off!” Quackity exclaims as he rushes forward and grabs onto Charlie’s shirt before he could fall off the Space Needle.)

-went well. So now here he is, the slime pretending to be a human that also holds the answers to (hopefully) all their questions. They just needed him to understand the questions that are being asked.

It took a lot of time (and patience as evident to Sapnap very nearly putting a blade at the slime’s throat) but they managed to get sufficient enough answers. Now they quickly suit up and make their way to the White House.

When they entered, there were no light source, as if the building hadn't been used in a while. But they won’t let the seemingly empty building trick them. With Charlie’s words in mind, they silently traverse the White House to find a private underground library. Then, they chop away at the shelves until they find an iron door, to which they break down with a pickaxe.

It leads into a small room with four water tunnels which, unfortunately for the server’s inhabitants, only Phil, Techno, Niki, Sam, Bad, and Foolish can use as they are the only ones who brought a trident with the riptide enchantment.

Charlie never mentioned anything about the tunnels, so they were forced to divide themselves and form plans. Sam and Bad are to take one tunnel, Foolish and Niki going in another, and Techno and Phil going alone to investigate the remaining two tunnels.

More plans for the remaining people who couldn’t go were made and the people wielding tridents were off, unsure, cautious, and determined to save their Admin.

Niki and Foolish arrive at the end of the tunnel to find themselves in a large, dimly lit room filled with blankets, pillows, and other soft material strewn about the area. The entire room is dark blue with lanterns hung up on the ceiling and glowstone dust stuck to the walls to simulate a night sky. The soft melodies of a music box play in the background, the two intruders are unsure where the source is coming from.

At the very back of the room is a large pile of them and from what Foolish can see through the dark with his glowing emerald eyes, a smiley porcelain mask leans innocently against a pillow, and right beside it is a hand poking out from the mound of soft materials.

“What is this place?” Niki examines the room, feeling unease despite the calming song of a music box that continues to play. Foolish take very light and hesitant steps forward, fully expecting some kind of trap to trigger but nothing happens, even then he continues his slow pace until he reaches the pillow pile. Grabbing ahold of the hand, he lightly tugs it. Pillows toppled down and he takes a step back, hand reaching for his sword in his inventory.

Once the pillows settle, he lets out a gasp at seeing Dream's head. Before he could move to pull him out, Niki's hands grabbed him from the shoulders and forcefully tugged him to a smaller pile of pillows. Before Foolish could ask what's wrong, the sounds of pistons moving answered his unspoken question.

One of the walls opened to reveal a pitch-black pathway. Tubbo held a torch that he immediately stashes back into his inventory as he steps in with Ranboo and Tommy flanking him. Ranboo makes a quick detour to Dream and immediately crouches down in front him, the Admin only groaning in his sleep as Ranboo spoke to him in hushed whispers. Tubbo and Tommy left the two alone, walking to the other side of the room to speak privately to each other without disturbing the enderman hybrid.

"Dream, wake up." Ranboo lightly shakes him. Dream lets out a yawn and stretches his arms out, eyes opening to blearily stare up at Ranboo. "I know you're tired but, we need your help. Could you help your family again?"

Foolish grits his teeth to keep himself from doing anything out of impulse. the anger from hearing those words is shared with Niki, who's trying to type away at her communicator without making large movements to disturb the pillows and blankets on their body to avoid detection, a bright flame glowing in her eyes as she bites her lips to contain her rage.

"What is it, Ranboo?" Dream quietly asks as he rubs his eyes. "There are people inside our home. Do you mind teleporting them away? They're going to make Michael cry with how scary they are."

Niki senses movement to her left and she turns to look at Foolish who decides that he has heard enough and jumps out of the pillow pile, sword and shield out and ready. "Dream! Don't listen to the-" The demi-god and pink-haired woman suddenly appears over water, gravity taking them down under. They both swim up and take twin gasps of air, Niki taking in quick breaths to wear off the shock of sudden cold that covers her entire body.

Despite the quick actions, Tommy glares at the public server chat. Niki already sent out the message before Dream could get her communicator to malfunction while being teleported. "Looks like we'll be fighting the entire server sooner."

"Sorry guys." The teens turn to Dream, who lets out a heavy sigh. "Don't be. This was bound to happen eventually." Ranboo pats him on the shoulders before standing up. "C'mon, help us get ready for the upcoming war."

"Can't we just take a break first? World is tired." Charlie says from somewhere within the pillows and blankets. Ranboo looks over his shoulder to see Tubbo and Tommy staring at them. Tubbo shrugs and suddenly starts running the soft mound with open arms. Ranboo quickly steps back and Tubbo rushes past him, then he jumps up out while yelling 'cuddle pile!' and landing directly on top of Dream, letting out a muffled 'oof!' before pushing the president to the side.

Ranboo looks down on Dream, then back at Tommy, both sharing a mischievous smile before the latter starts running, doing the same thing as Tubbo did. Ranboo shows no mercy despite Dream's pleading look and jumps right on the cuddle pile. The enderman hybrid can feel someone, most likely Charlie, pull a blanket over them before they all dozed off.

They can rely on Charlie to keep them away while they take a much-needed nap. After all, wars, as fun as they are, can be very tiring, and they'll need all the energy they can get.

Chapter Text

Dream drowned whilst trying to escape TommyInnit.

TommyInnit hit the ground too hard.

“Oh! Would you look at that? More friends to share the freeing feeling of being dead! Gotta go!” The ghost of Ranboo known as Ghostboo happily says as he waves at the appalled people outside the prison with a large amount of enthusiasm as he walks away, purple blood freely pouring down from his slash wound.

Among the people who were left aghast at the two notifications is a fleeing Techno who’s left with more questions. In the hopes of getting answers, he rides his horse to Snowchester to find Tubbo.

He finds no answers when he enters Ranboo’s bedroom with the windows shattered open to find the suspended body of Tubbo hanging from a fence post in the middle of the room, droplets of blood trailing down the body's chin. What he does find are more questions, a book that closely resembles one of Ranboo’s memory books-

Tubbo_ suffocated.

-and another death message.

Four deaths in one day. So much blood spilled, yet the voices in Techno’s head remain silent. They then erupt into loud cries to stop the little zombified piglin, Michael, from tugging on the hanging body’s pants, increasingly getting more persistent and harsher in tone.

The sounds of bone snapping silence the voices once more.

Ghostbur gleefully tells Friend about his day as one hand held onto his lead while the other is animatedly swinging this way and that, as if it would help the sheep understand what the amnesiac ghost is saying.

However, he comes to quiet down, which doesn't go unnoticed by the blue sheep as he looks up at his ghostly companion in question.

“And this is, or I guess was, L’Manberg!” Both sheep and ghost turn to the sounds of someone unfamiliar talking to…who?

“Can’t you just shorten it to L’Crater or Crater instead?” Ghostbur perks up at the familiar voice of Ranboo and goes off the path to go after the conversation to say hello. “It just seems too much of a mouthful for something nobody cares about anymore, you know?”

“Yeah, true.” Oh, that’s Tommy’s voice! Ghostbur pushes the leaves of a bush out of his way, and his smile drops as his excited greeting dies on his tongue, an uncomfortable tightness forming in his throat.

“Even though nobody cares for this place, I don’t think it’s a good spot for us to stay. People love history, even if said history is a dark memory.” A gray version of Tubbo says as he lightly hops from one leg to the other, momentarily floating a few inches in between his hops, his head lolling from side to side as if he’s hanging from his neck.  Tubbo whips his head around to look at Ghostbur, the flesh around the teen’s neck seems to darken into a disgusting shade of green and strain at the impossible rotation as if his neck snapped. “Oh hi, Ghostbur! Come join us!” He manages to choke out, sounding as if air was struggling to escape to voice each word as if being strangled by a noose, or perhaps poisoned?. His ghost is wearing a green long-sleeved shirt, his pants and shoes are from his Snowchester attire and the thick coat that comes with it is wrapped around his waist. Little droplets of pale green ichor slowly ooze out from the corner of his mouth yet makes no move to wipe it away.

Ghostbur’s smile strains as he scans the desaturated faces of people he knew were alive from when he last saw them, which was the day he failed to do his part in the prison.

What happened?

“The names Spectubbo and I’m feeling spectacular! How about you? You’re Ghostbur, right?” Blue begins to trickle down from the mentioned ghost’s mouth, but nobody seems to acknowledge it as he nods. “Yes, that’s me. I, u-uh, I’m doing alright. Would you like some blue?”

“Nah, we’re good,” Tommy’s ghost dismissively waves his hand at Ghostbur, a relaxed smile on his face.

“We’re not sad if that’s what you’re worried about.” Ghostbur spins around to find Ranboo standing right behind him, his face so close that he might go cross-eyed just by looking at him. He takes a few steps back and thankfully, Ranboo doesn’t follow after him, instead opting to wave a hand in between their heads, little specks of purple blood flying off to the side from his claws. “I’m Ghostboo. Uncreative but one, it’s a fun ghost pun, and two, it’s just a name. As long as it’s different from Aliveboo’s name, I'm all good,” Ghostbur barely listens to Ghostboo’s tangent as he stares at Tommy’s ghost, more blue leaking from his mouth, his eyes ready to spill dark blue (and burning) tears.

“I know, I look awesome, right? I’m Phantommy,” Tom- Phantommy has cuts and wide openings from what Ghostbur can see from underneath the loose bandages that wrap around the teen’s limbs, his grayed skin makes each visible one stand out in a vibrant red. Blood falls heavily from a spot on his head, a telling mark as to how Tommy died: by a severe head injury. He slings an arm to another ghost that Ghostbur somehow didn’t notice before. “This is Daydream and he daydreams a lot, so he’s mostly quiet.” The ghost, indeed, is quiet, pale green eyes wide and unfocused as they stare off into the distance.

Daydream seems to be in a worse condition compared to everyone else. Like Phantommy, he has cuts and open wounds everywhere, like Spectubbo, he has bruises (though unlike him, he has them all over his body than just around his neck), and like Ghostboo, they’re all leaking, but instead of red, green, or blue, it’s a dark and sickly yellow, the ghostly ichor flowing more freely like water than thickly like blood. Despite looking thin and malnourished, there are strangely some areas of chub, his large open cuts somewhat closed and wrinkled, his hands pale and also wrinkled. Very reminiscent of a corpse that's left in water, cold and bloating.

The constantly leaking and crying ghost in his tattered inmate jumpsuit smiles wistfully at the sunset off in the distance, slowly swaying side to side like a corpse being gently pushed around by the water's waves.

“-and here’s where you’ll get a gambling addiction, which is better than an alcohol addiction-”

“I disagree, I feel like alcoholism is better-”

“-but anyway, this place is Las Nevadas,” is all Quackity hears from around the corner and silently wonders why Tommy and Tubbo are here. He goes around the corner to confront the two when his words suddenly get stuck at the back of his throat, mouth meant to form words now left open as his mind blanks at the five ghosts of Wilbur, Ranboo, Tommy, Tubbo, and Dream.

“I don’t think-” a cough cuts Ghostbur off, blue flying from his mouth to his sleeve-covered hand, a bit of the liquid dribbling down his chin, “-either addiction is good.”

“Whatever, not important. So anyway, I don’t think this place is a good one to call home either. It’s too-” Tubbo gestures out to the beyond of the desert, “-sandy and dry. Daydream is a water-based ghost. He’s going to dry out!”

“Spectubbo, I don’t think he can 'cause he’s literally a ghost- it’s like saying Ghostbur can run out of blue-” The five ghosts, blue sheep, and human-pretending slime all turn to Quackity as he makes a fake cough, their faces in varying levels of surprise (or none at all in Charlie, Daydream, and Friend’s case) as they've momentarily forgot about him.

“Hello, Quackity from Las Nevadas! I made new friends!” He uses his arms to gesture at his ghostly buddies plus sheep. Quackity’s expression remains passive as his slimy companion introduces each one of them, keeping an eye on him- what was it? Daydream?- in particular.

“Can we leave yet? I don’t like how dry this place is, and it’s probably going to be too bright and crowded here anyways. No way am I agreeing to have this place as our home,” firmly states Phantommy with a grimace of disapproval. “But look at all this sand! We can make as many bottles as we want! Or even make a giant fish tank if we wanted to,” Spectubbo argues back.

Daydream lets out a yawn as he's a ghost of the lower end of the energy spectrum, and was going to lean against Ghostbur as he’s the nearest person, but the blue-coughing ghost quickly swaps places with Phantommy as he’s averse to water (and because he’s still unsure of him as he was killed by his alive self). Daydream only lets out a sigh as he closes his eyes, tired and exhausted from traveling. The blond teen makes a face and says, “We really need to get like a horse or a mule soon.”

“Let’s get a mule so that we can carry stuff.”

“There’s literally six of us, why do we need more inventory space?”

“Why not? The more the merrier, plus it can carry DD.”

Quackity quietly asks Charlie to follow him as they go around the corner that he was previously hiding in. He decides to ignore the arguing ghosts and turns to his trusted companion and kindly asks him what the fuck is going on. Charlie, with his ever-present smile, answers as honestly as possible. “You see, Quackity from Las Nevadas, when Technoblade from the Arctic broke Dream from Somewhere out from Pandora’s Vault, Tommyinnit from Nowhere went after Dream and drowned him to make sure that he doesn’t revive him after he dies. Ranboo from Snowchester was killed by Sam and Tubbo from L'Manberg committed…” Quackity watches Charlie take a book out from his inventory and skims through its pages. “...soup...eat…side…” It took the president of Las Nevadas a minute or two to finally understand that he meant “suicide”.

The Mexican slowly nods as he processes what Charlie told him before asking his next question, “Do they remember being alive?”

Quiet falls between them as Charlie lets out a loud thoughtful hum, the two decidedly ignoring the ghosts that are somehow still bickering about their “home” or whatever it was and not at all noticing them being gone yet. “Daydream and Ghostbur don’t remember, but the other three do.”

“Charlie! Come on! We’re going to the next area!” Spectubbo announces, sounding far more distant than he should be from around the corner.

“Okay!” Charlie yells back as he begins to speedwalk away. He turns back to Quackity as he does so and waves at him, “See you around, Quackity from Las Nevadas!”

The man’s head is too busy processing everything Charlie said to reply, and when he’s finally done, they’re already gone. He lets out a grumble before going back to whatever it was he was doing with one thought in mind, “What the fuck?”

Unbeknownst to him, his health bar is missing two whole hearts.

"Really? Here? Why? Look how disorganized everything is! What kind of weeb shit is this?" George hears a familiar voice complain. There were a few times when he came outside his house, and those few times he wanted peace as Sapnap kept telling him to "get some sunlight" and "to not sleep so much". Another reason why he complied is to hang out with his other only best friend.

This is not the peace he had in mind. "As fun as everything looks, I agree with Phantommy."

“Phantommy..?” The hothead beside him mumbles underneath his breath as he looks at the direction of the voice. Both of their brains screeched into a halt as they see someone unfamiliar, a mule, and a concerningly large group of ghosts flocking together, the word “flocking” being appropriate as they can very clearly see Glatt going after them with a massive umbrella and a glass of protein milkshake.

“I get L’Manberg and Las Nevadas, but here? No way, I’m not staying,” objects Glatt. “Then we’re not. Besides, I’m pretty sure Halfdream has some bad history with people here,” Phantommy comments with a shrug and a bored expression.

“'Halfdream'?”

“Daydream’s alive self,” Charlie informs the dead dictator.

“..I mean, it’s better than Alivedre or whatever name we can come up with.”

“Oh look, it’s Sapnap and George. Hello there!” Ghostboo waves at the shell-shocked duo, cutting off Glatt and Phantommy’s conversation. The two remaining members of the Dream Team stare at Daydream’s sleeping form that’s slumped forward on a mule that’s on a lead held by Spectubbo. His ichor drips heavily from his mouth and nose compared to the open cuts all around his body.

“Don’t mind us, we’re just pass-” Sapnap is the first to break out from his state of dismay, “What the fuck happened?”

“Oh would you look at the time?” Spectubbo says while pointing at his sleeved wrist, visibly not having a watch or any other way to tell time, “Time for us to leave- go, go, go!”

“HEY! Get back here!” Charlie, the mule, and the group of ghosts all flee from Kinoko Kingdom with Sapnap close behind him. George just stares at the shrinking figures until he can no longer see them, turns on his heel, and walks back home to take a nap.

While the wild goose (or ghost) chase is happening, nobody notices Techno standing up on a hill some distance away with a little zombified piglin in his arm as he watches the scene unfold, or the fact that both former friends of Halfdream lost health hearts.

“Let’s just start over.”

“But we haven’t visited the Arctic-”

“Any snowy place is already bad, Glatt. Ghostbur melts in water and snow is technically water, just frozen, and Daydream is going to freeze out there and probably clog- clot? -his wounds, which is bad," argues Phantommy as he, compared to the other ghost loopers, is more level-headed and grounded, which is somewhat ironic as he died jumping off a cliff and landing headfirst at the very bottom. He's still annoyed that he hit other things such as branches and edges of rocks yet somehow still survived up until the final landing. His cause of death should have made him an earth-based ghost but due to it being a suicide, he only has two supernatural properties: being heavier than he should be and being able to take no fall damage. Funnily enough, being "grounded" also meant that Phantommy can't come off the ground via elytra or levitation effect. Spectubbo just says that it complimented him as he can't stay grounded and is constantly levitating (as he died via hanging, thus being able to fly).

Identity-wise, Phantommy sees himself as the same person as he was alive, unlike most ghosts who see their alive counterparts as a separate person from themselves. Though, to avoid confusion and to know which stage of his life is being referred to, his alive self has been given the name Alivemy as it sounds like "alive me".

With suicide being able to stop ghosts from seeing their alive counterparts as another person, it should have made Ghostboo and Spectubbo the same as Phantommy, right? See, the thing is, while Ranboo wanted to die, and while Tubbo did hang himself, they both weren't killed by their own hands (got killed by Sam and was poisoned by Tommy respectively), thus didn't entirely count. So now, they sometimes refer to their alive selves as a separate person, and sometimes they refer to them as themselves.

The circumstances of how different ghosts are created is certainly a very interesting topic for Dream to read about to pass the time whenever he's left alone with nothing to do while the other loopers are messing with the server, as per usual.

Technoblade is right, Dream really is a nerd.

“Why does Ghostbur melt from water?”

“I don’t know, Glatt, why do you melt under the sun?”

Even though Daydream’s eyes are close, he’s actually very much awake and knows the answers to their questions. Wilbur felt a large amount of sorrow and guilt in his death when he realized what he’s done, which should have been enough to make him a water-based and/or an emotion-based ghost, but then he was killed by Phil using a sword with Fire Aspect, which would have made a fire-based ghost. With the two factors of how one’s ghost forms being conflicting, it’s no surprise that Ghostbur ended up as a weak mix of both- having a minor ability of emotion removal (being able to remove sorrow from a person or himself through the use of blue), and the weakness of a fire-based ghost (inability to interact with water).

Now add to the fact that his last death (where he was killed by Dream via being pushed into lava) was very traumatic, he can now cry boiling water. Ghostbur really did get the short end of the spectral stick.

As for Glatt, his ghost is a lot easier to figure out. He was an insane and unhealthily drunk, power-hungry dictator when he died, and since ghosts can end up (and mostly do) obtain traits that are opposite to their alive selves' traits, Glatt is a sane ghost who’s obsessed with being healthy and self-care/improvement. As for why he can’t stand being under the sun; the sun is considered a symbol of purity and goodness, which are essentially the opposite to him as a character person as he was a dictator.

Unfortunately, he can’t voice any of this (not in front of any non-loopers anyway) as his ghostly body is too drained of energy to do anything other than sleeping as if in a state of neigh hibernation due to insufficient warmth (and the prison's conditions that he endured while alive is also to blame, as too how he died), not that he minds. He wouldn’t like to pass up the opportunity to be able to rest and not take part in the loopers’ inevitable mayhem after all.

He can hear Ghostbur let out a series of harsh coughs, his hands that held potion bottles (or whatever empty container he's holding) move away from Daydream’s body in favor of covering his mouth as to not get blue stains on both him and on the bed that they’re both occupying.

Daydream puts in a concerningly large amount of effort to crack his lids open and, with bleary eyes, sees Eret standing in front of the doorway of the guest bedroom that they're currently hiding in with a puzzled smile as he tries to understand the situation that led to the ghosts (and slime) into barging in his castle in the first place.

“Guess we’ll have to settle with Logstedshire. Not like anybody uses it anymore,” Phantommy uses his own blood to circle his exile island on the map Charlie stole from somewhere. Eret goes ever so slightly pale at seeing the ghost use his own blood as improvised ink.

Another round of coughs causes Daydream to look at the blue-loving ghost that’s been given the responsibility to collect his blood (as his blood has the effects of weaker regeneration thanks to Sam and Quackity using who knows how many potions to heal him on a daily basis).

“Ghostbur, if you’re sad, just let it out. We’re dead but that doesn’t mean we just stop feeling pain, which sucks,” Ghostboo states from his sitting spot on the vanity table across the bed as he leans against the mirror.

“N-no, I’m alright,” Daydream is sure that Ghostbur is not alright. The Admin has come to know through study that emotion-based ghosts have a chance of gaining the ability to create these white stones that can take away a certain emotion and turn into a color associated with that emotion (for Ghostbur’s case, blue for sadness). Fundy was right that Ghostbur was always sad, and because the white stones are from his very being (along with his sorrow), the stones always come out as blue.

These stones, however, do have a limit as to how much sadness it can take before it’s rendered useless (the color being oxford blue, Daydream found out some loops ago when Ghostbur was his caretaker).

Ghostbur’s body will absorb his own sadness as he suppresses it, but there’s only so much room in his being can hold before it starts leaking out: first from his mouth, then from his eyes, and lastly, bleeding out from his scar across his chest if his sadness is really that bad, and from what Daydream can see, Ghostbur is almost at the last stage.

“Oh hey, DD! You’re awake!” Spectubbo says as he floats over to the bed. He takes the bottle from Ghostbur’s hand, which is half-full of Daydream’s ghostly ichor, and takes over in collecting his blood as the yellow-sweatered ghost continues to cough, both hands covering his mouth and staining his sleeves, eyes screwed shut to prevent tears from falling down his face and burn him and Daydeam who's head is on his lap. “We’re heading over to Logstedshire by dawn. Think you can stay awake 'til then? The sunset will be perfect by then!”

Too tired and physically exhausted with mild sensations of numbness and stinging pain being a constant distraction for him to concentrate long enough to vocalize the words, he slowly nods once.

Watching the entire scene, Eret can’t help but feel pity for the man that once was a friend. He silently wonders what happened in prison to cause the orange jumpsuit to be in horrible condition, further ruined and stained by permanent dampness and his yellow blood doesn't stop bleeding out, his pale gray cheeks shining due to tear tracks that will forever stain his face for as long as his ghost is here.

He considers contacting Phil in searching for a way to revive people.

“Thanks again, Eret! You’re a good pal!” Ghostboo loudly proclaims as he rides away on a horse with Glatt behind him. Phantommy is with Ghostbur on a different horse, Charlie riding with Daydream on his (surprisingly fast) mule, and Spectubbo is just flying after them. Eret is slowly waving back at them, expression void of emotion, and failing to notice his communicator alerting him of private messages that he received, or that a pair of his hearts have disappeared.

Phantommy is leading the way with Ghostboo’s horse being the last of the group, having to go slower unless they want Glatt’s umbrella to break because of strong winds.

Daydream stayed awake to watch the sun disappear from the horizon, then went back to napping and doing nothing (as he usually did most of the time in these loops, except for when the loopers needed anything from him). Glatt closed his umbrella and kept it in his inventory, now enjoying the sight of the stars as he’s been living in his underground gym for most of his existence.

Nobody made a sound except for Ghostbur’s coughs that have since lessened ever since they’ve left the castle.

When they arrived, it was around midnight, which is good because Glatt is still free to walk around without an umbrella, which means an extra pair of hands to begin gathering materials, which he enthusiastically began doing the moment Phantommy told them what they were doing now (“Gathering materials is a work out in and of itself!” Glatt yells out as he quickly takes down his fifth tree). Daydream tries to help Charlie collect wood but only ends up chopping down one small tree before he’s slumped against a double chest filled with cobblestone.

They then begin constructing a simple starting house that can fit them all in. Because they’re ghosts, sleeping is optional, however, some of them didn’t want to (or couldn't) sleep and instead dug a staircase down to mine more resources (Spectubbo and Glatt). Ghostbur left the house to wander around and try to look for Friend that he somehow lost while traveling to Kinoko Kingdom from Las Nevadas.

The days and nights they’ve spent did not go to waste as they slowly and surely made houses for themselves. The two non-looper ghosts decided to live separately, Charlie went to stay with Daydream as caretaker and patient, Phantommy opting to live in a cobblestone tower as a guard, and Spectubbo decided to live in a smaller version of his Bee Dome that also acted as a greenhouse. Ghostboo is just jumping between living with him, Phantommy, and Charlie and Daydream.

They knew that news of them being ghosts will catch some attention, but who is something they have yet to figure out as now they can only guess, not that it entirely mattered at the moment.

Due to living with two other ghosts that can pop up at any moment, they’ve decided to talk to each other in their private chat on their communicators. Right now, Charlie is just watching the house to make sure no visitors come as Daydream sluggishly works to add data packs into the server, the little heart pieces in his hand twirling as if stuck in a little tornado all glistens under the moonlight from his window.

Time to make sure the loopers specifically can’t be revived if by off-chance Phil and/or Eret manages to figure out another way to revive ghosts.

TommyInnit: I doubt Sapnap’s going to leave Dream alone.

Ranboo: Yea

Tubbo_: Tru

Slimecicle: I’m more worried about him burning this place down.

TommyInnit: I can deal with him. It’ll fit my character.

Ranboo: I’ll deal with Techno. I think I saw some glimpses of him, not sure tho

Chapter Text

The sounds of a clock ticking filled the silent room, lit by a giant screen that counted down the seconds.

Ranboo rocks his son in his arms. A tired smile makes his way on his face as he looks down at the cold body of Michael as the timer nears its end.

Tubbo has his eyes glued to the screen with a blank and unreadable expression.

They can both hear the far and muffled voices of people who rebelled due to their absence and are now attempting to stop them, but there was no stopping time. It simply continues to march on, even without the presence of a clock.

When the numbers displayed on the large screen before them struck zero, the platonic husbands held each other’s hand and closed their eyes, smirking when they listened to the panicked shouts of those who failed to find them.

In the far distance, Charlie keeps Tommy company in Logstedshire, quietly humming a random tune as they ignore the sounds of their communicators beeping widely and the distant blast of a nuke exploding in a snow biome.

“Hey, Tommy.” Charlie turns to the teen beside him who absentmindedly drew shapes on the sand below them. “Yeah?”

“Are you going to miss this server?”

“No, why would I?” questions the teen, “it's not like it has anywhere else to go. We can always come back here for nostalgia n'shit with the book by leaving a page empty," Tommy easily answers.

"Oh, right. Silly me."

A comfortable silence falls onto them as they wait for this loop's demise, along with their own. Tommy is the one who breaks that silence with a quiet question, "Where's Dream?"

"He's watching the server’s destruction from a high place."

"...I know we're past being awkward allies but, how is he? Is he still up in hanging out with us after this? This is his server we're changing." Tommy couldn't help but ramble, unsure as to where the spike of anxiety came from.

"He's happy, Tommy. More than ever after the Manhunt Festival. He’s glooping with us."

"'Glooping'? You mean 'sticking'?"

"It's the same, innit?"

"...fuck yeah it is."

The previously mentioned Admin peacefully rests on a tall mountain peak, his little golden clock ticking away its last seconds before it inevitably stops along with its owner’s heartbeat, its surface reflecting light from when another large explosion erupts to where Manberg was off in the distance.

It then begins ticking backwards.

Limbo is a strange place to be stuck in. Hellish, yes, but strange. Wilbur has been stuck in the dark train station that’s in hues of red for 14 years, now nearing 15 in about three months.

Wilbur has lost count of how many times he has played solitaire after the sudden realization of his faults and guilt hit him. That period of his time here in silence has been an awful time, more so than when he first woke up to see the concrete walls of his prison in the afterlife.

Then, the strangest thing starts happening.

For the last 14 years, he’s heard nothing but the little sounds that he himself makes. Now, he hears the faint and foreign sounds of a clock ticking, progressively growing louder and louder with each tick.

Unsure if it is a good or a bad sign, Wilbur cautiously stands up from where he sat on the floor and begins looking around, trying to locate the source of the noise. It seems to be coming from everywhere.

Soon, static begins to fill the screens and the dot matrixes attached to the ceiling, buzzing to life as it displays scrambled letters in bright neon yellows and oranges.

Wilbur squints at the screen as the letters begin arranging themselves, finding the right combinations to spell out a destination.

“Backstage” it reads.

The distant sound of a train’s horn can be heard down the dark tunnel. Wilbur couldn’t help but feel a bubble of hope in his chest at the thought that maybe, just maybe , he can finally get out and live again.

The sounds of wheels rolling on rails draw closer and closer, then abruptly screech as they come to a halt. Once the train fully stops, the doors open. Wilbur slowly approaches the train, his playing cards clenched tightly in his hand within his trenchcoat’s pocket as he steps in with great hesitation. The train’s doors behind him immediately shuts and the entire vehicle starts moving forward to its destination.

This kind of afterlife was not the place Phil was expecting to find when he died. When he was made as an Angel of Death, he was destined to stay in the domain where the Goddess of Death herself resides.

Instead of seeing the god who just so happens to be his wife, he is instead transported into a realm of glass and clocks. Everywhere he looked, no matter where he turned, there were clocks and hourglasses of varying designs, all floating. Some were barely touching the ground, others were so far up the void that he had to squint to see them.

Beneath him is a reflective surface that shows him, but…different. The clocks and hourglasses are all shattered in the reflective floor, and his mirror image seems to be holding a blood-stained diamond sword.

Cautiously, he begins walking towards the nearest clock, one that strongly resembles Dream’s clock from prison, yet he has no recollection of how he knew that. He can see faint images moving across the surface of its glass, and he moves closer.

The images are much clearer now, and what he saw caused him to recoil back, his wings flared open in his shock. It shows a graphic image of him torturing Dream instead of Quackity, another memory that he has no recollection of knowing.

He takes another step back, then another, and another, putting distance between himself and the clock with wide eyes. Then he bumps into something. Whirling around, he finds his reflection now kicking a severely injured Ranboo down in a dark room on the reflective surface of a giant hourglass. Pleas and whimpers escaped the enderman hybrid as he shields his head and neck with his bruised arms.

“Puh-please Phil. I’m sorr-” The avian recovers from his shock and immediately begins running with his eyes tightly screwed shut, not wanting to see any more horrible images, and it appears this strange realm notices that.

The black void above begins producing sounds, all of which were pleading for Phil for mercy, and each word, even if they all spoke at the same time, he could hear very clearly.

The choked words of Dream as he’s being strangled, the shrill shrieks of Tubbo has he burns in fire, the gurgled cries of Tommy as he drowns in his own blood that spews from his throat, and the words of Ranboo that begged to be spared with promises of doing better.

Phil covers his ear as best as he could, gritting his teeth as he tries in vain to ignore the horrid noises to the best of his abilities. He trips and falls harshly against the glass floor, but he refuses to open his eyes or remove his hands from the sides of his head. His black wings surround his body as he kneels into a fetal position, his forehead pressed harshly on the floor, bucket hat left forgotten where it fell on the floor in front of him.

Despite finding the pathetic display of a strong man now crumbled to the ground amusing, the void above wishes to overload him of his senses by making him see and feel every memory of the loops. From the memories of destruction he took part in committing to the suffering he endured under the loopers’ hands, he felt everything, his body now shaking and aching at it, too, remembers the pain it had given and received.

He does not see his reflection, now wearing red instead of green, smile cruelly down at him from the floor, nor does he notice the sounds of feet running towards him, or the looming presents of something above him.

The winged man feels himself going slack, mind overwhelmed with a need, but for what? His instincts, which he distantly questions the origins of, forces his body to uncurl from its position on the floor.

He hears light tapping of wood hitting glass, and that’s all Phil hears before he’s no more than the man he once was, reduced into nothing but mere character to be revised.

Wilbur stays rooted in place as he watches his own reflection on a giant hourglass as he observes Tommy, who tries to dig himself out of a shallow pit with sand pouring from above, let out a round of harsh coughs, sounding more and more pained as the teen inhales more sand. The image of a disheveled Wilbur kicks Tommy’s hand away and begins pushing more sand into the pit and onto Tommy who can only let out pained gasps for help.

“Wil-Wilbur! Please! I can-can’t breathe!” Wilbur tightly screws his eyes shut and forces himself to look away. He forces himself to spin on his heel and get his legs to move and walk him away from the horrible sight that, for some reason, filled him with a sickening sense of delight.

In his opinion, staying in the train station in complete silence is better than having to see himself tormenting the people he cares about, and the people he looked up to. Sure, he made up many dark what-ifs in his limbo, but he never expected to have to see them like this.

What would happen if he fully went and labeled Dream as a tyrant just because he was petty for not getting independence for his nation made from the Admin’s lands, what Tubbo would look like if Techno fired more than one firework, what would happen if he fully weaponized Tommy, and even two scenarios that involved a person he only saw in passing, and one he never even met. His brain at the time wondered what would happen if an enderman hybrid- Ranboo, his brain supplies- were to be pushed into a large volume of water or be executed via waterboarding, and what would happen if a slime in the shape of a human were to violently be torn apart with TNT.

Wilbur swallows a mouthful of saliva as he continues walking in a random direction, eyes locked down the entire time, fearing what he may see or feel from the clocks if he ever looks up. Unfortunately, even the reflection beneath him is a sight he wishes not to see.

The ends of his trenchcoat shredded and ruined, blood sticking to his shoes and leaving footprints behind, hair long and unkept with a patch of it being pure white, an air of confidence and pride following him as if seeing the atrocities that he committed as accomplishments rather than tragedies. Is that the man he would have become had he not felt remorse for his sins?

The faint sounds of sobbing echo in a direction to his right, and it sounds nothing like the cries that the reflections have shown him, nor did they feel him a sense of pleasure, which he desperately wishes is a good sign.

Thus, he begins his journey to follow the distressed cries, just anything other than having to watch himself kill off five people who never deserved the fate that they’re being subjected to.

Although he finds it hard to move the closer he brings himself to the cries, slowly struggling both physically and emotionally to bring himself to care for the sobbing noise of someone he feels is familiar to him.

The reflection beneath his feet begins to grow curling horns, similar to a sheep’s, blue stains appearing in no particular order and all over.

He finds himself abruptly stopping as an unknown urgency begins to build. He looks down and finds his reflection moving of its own accord in a panicked manner. It spun around its heel then started running. Wilbur lets out a noise of surprise when he, too, runs with no capability to stop.

“Dream? DREAM!?” His reflection calls out. Thoughts of finding Dream owner grew louder and louder until he couldn’t focus on his own.

‘What was happening to him?’ was his last, quiet thought before Wilbur was overridden by a new conscience.

Karl has himself curled in a tight ball on the floor with his ears covered and eyes screwed shut. He doesn’t know what’s going on or where he is, but what he does know is that this place is the absolute worst compared to everything he has seen and experienced while time traveling.

The clocks around him tick away, change their displays, or have more grains of sand fall down as each second passes, the sounds that would normally calm him now haunt him with each vision of himself doing nothing but stand by and watch people get hurt.

Then, wet sounds could be heard, and it drew closer and closer. Karl sits up and immediately backs away using his arms that drags his tired body and his legs that kick the slippery mirror surface of the floor.

“Hello, Karl from a lot of times!” The human figure wearing only a white shirt and glasses immediately loses its form after his greeting, now a blob of slime on the reflective surface that strangely doesn’t display any alternate form of the slime, or any reflection at all. “Dap me up!”

Karl looks at him with shock in his wide eyes as he lets out a laugh full of confusion. “U-uh, excuse me?”

"Dap me up!" Charlie says again, though still, Karl slowly backs away, instincts of unknown origin telling him to stay away. This does not go unnoticed. "What’s wrong, Karl from somewhere in time?”

He doesn’t know what possessed him to run, but he did, and he didn’t look back. “Where are you going, Karl from everywhere at the end of time?"

The footsteps that follow behind him get louder and louder at an alarmingly fast rate. Karl momentarily loses his footing but manages to catch himself, and a glimpse behind him.

What was once a slime humanoid is now a writhing mass of yellowed papyrus, hard mahogany, and thick magenta leather. The thing lets out a bellowing roar as its feet slam against the reflective floor, leaving behind a large splatter of dark ink.

The creature continues to pursue the once-time-traveling human, except it does not move faster, mocking him of his inevitable faith to be something less yet desirable. 

The other characters can wait for their rewrite, its charges can wait for their playthings, the Interlude can wait for its new denizens, for now, it wishes to play what many mortals would call it, a game of cat and mouse.

The entity of Backstage disappointingly obverse this human who shares vague qualities of its creator begin to slow. It lets out another roar to make its temporary toy put in the effort to flee, but it only serves to make him run clumsier.

Very well, its time is up. It must change him and send him to Interlude.

A few long strides and the human is within its teeth, tearing his physical body and shredding into his soul, breaking his very being with nonexistent mercy.

Mixing with the broken pieces are specific papers that have also been torn apart. The creature swirls the pieces together from within itself, sticking everything into thick ink. Finally, it compresses it all into a new human but does not spit him out just yet.

Striding to a location only it knows from within this endless space of clocks and glass, it comes across a singular, large, numberless clock, floating just above a circular hole beneath it that shows nothing but jet-black darkness. The arms slowly move counterclockwise as it emits a soft and calming melody of a music box.

The creature lets the new soul out from its body, letting the new addition to Interlude float towards the clock, disappearing with a quick distortion that warped this reality’s space when he got too close to it.

It lets out a breath of air that sounds similar to a sigh of satisfaction. Charlie will surely be pleased with his new librarian.

Turning around, it drags itself away from the timeless paradise’s clock. It worries not for the clock’s safety, for it is kept and cared for by the realm itself.

Two more characters to write, and then it may rest and wait for more desires to fulfill.

It believes those characters are a Quackity and a Sam Nook.

Chapter Text

Instead of waking in front of an enormous and elegantly intimidating palace that they (mostly Dream) managed to repair and reform, the loopers awaken in their individual bedrooms. Their bodies ached due to their last loop ending with their deaths due to a car accident, not that they minded as much. They missed the bad ends, despite it reminding them of their past heroic failures (Tommy physically cringes every time he remembers) and it gives them some ideas for loops in the future.

Dream doesn't bother getting up just yet. He takes his mask off and places it on the nightstand, then he rolls to his side to a more comfortable position and hugs the soft pillow closest to him. It seems that his pet sheep took the initiative. He can hear the sounds of clothes being taken off, feel his heavy blanket be lifted and a dip forming on the side of his bed, then finally, he can feel hands snaking their way around his hips from behind.

"I missed you," whispers Wilfred right to his ear. Dream doesn't reply, not that he needed to anyway, as he moves a hand to his pet's wrist and gives a light squeeze. They both fall back to sleep. Just a few more hours of sleep before he can get up to start self-indulgence hours. He’s sure that the others are busy relaxing themselves, then they'd be doing whatever it is they want to do in their own time, and then at the end of the day, they relax even more, but Fancier™.

When he awakens, however, it’s to Wilfred everso gently rocking him awake. The sun doesn’t rise in the east, but rather in the west as Interlude’s day-and-night cycle is reversed, and with where his bedroom is located, sun rays can’t reach him at this time of the day, only successful in dimly lighting the baby blue room.

“It’s time to eat, Dream,” technically they all didn’t need to eat as this is Interlude, a strange place that renders them in some conscious state of stasis. Is that going to stop them from doing useless things such as eating? No. He may be over his trauma of prison, but he didn’t come out the same person as he was before it. The countless bite marks hidden under Wilfred’s clothes are a testament to how active his teeth have been due to his experiences of forced starvation. That and the fact that he’s constantly making sure that he (and the others) have some access to food, even in loops where their roles required them to starve.

Dream lets out a groan as he peels the blankets off of him and sits up while rubbing his eyes. He tiredly looks up at Wilfred who’s quick to step back and give him some space. Physically, he hasn’t changed much from when Dream first got him, just some slight adjustments to his accessories such as a black beanie, circular (fake) glasses, and switching the smiley mask that was on his head for a little replica as an embellishment to his new blue collar, although he has a feeling that the others have been tampering with Wilfred personality-wise, not that he’s going to stop them anyway.

Wilfred tidies up the bed as Dream does his stretches, then once done, the sheep hybrid takes his trenchcoat and shoulder bag and then offers him his leash (which is golden yellow with specks of blue). Dream takes it and immediately tugs harshly as he makes his way out the door, causing Wilfred to stumble and choke as he follows along with a light blush and lovestruck smile on his face (100% one of the teens made him like it this much as a reference to that cat maid service he’s heard off).

He silently wonders what the others are doing in their private times but his thoughts swiftly drift to his loop ideas as he makes his way to the palace dining room where Wilfred prepared a hearty meal just for him. Unlike the others, he tends to overthink and refine the details of what he wants in a loop, thus being the person with the least loops made, however, it did make him the best at creating them as the others seem to enjoy each one.

The effort put into each custom timeline is always worth seeing them all smile as they explore his creations.

Despite being free from prison, a minuscule part of him is still left from the original timeline. He doubts that the guilt of what he has done to the teens will ever fade, and no matter how much time passed (or reset). And no matter how good he is at ignoring and/or hiding it, Charlie just somehow knows, and knowing Charlie, he might have slipped to the others of that fact just judging the way they’ve been looking after him. It’s a routine at this point, and Dream is not going to do anything about it. There's nothing he can do about it.

Those teens are just as stubborn as he is, and if this is what they wanted, he’ll let them. ‘That’s what family does, Dream,’ Tommy’s words echo in his ears. ‘We look out for each other.’

Think of the devil and the devil may come, he sees Tommy walking down the hallway with a Sam Nook by his side. A wide grin appears on his face as he asks, “Wanna spar before lunch?”

Face uncovered for his family to see, Dream returns Tommy’s grin with a competitive smile. “Winner gets to add anything bad to the other’s loop?”

“You’re on!”

Tommy sprints down the gravel pathways around Interlude, admiring how the sunlight hits the ridiculously clean white palace that he doesn’t doubt Dream spent a huge chunk of his time perfecting behind their backs.

Right behind him is a much cooler Sam Nook (or Nook for short) that the others helped in making. The robot’s lower body is replaced with a creeper’s as he admits (but not to any non-loopers’ face) that creeper centaur Sam looks sick as fuck and so gave Nook that. With the creeper body, he gave the robot some bags, holsters, and a saddle (which is very much inspired by Dream’s idea to give Wilfred some practical uses). For clothing, he’s wearing a yellow sweater, a crown adorned with rubies, simple bands and armor plates of gold on his shoulders, forearms, legs, and raccoon tail, and a pair of yellow piercings on his fluffy ears.

Tommy kneels down and rests his hands on his knees as he catches a break from his jog. Nook takes a water bottle out from a holster on his foreleg, uncaps it, and hands it to his charge. The blond downs half the bottle’s contents and hands it back to trade it for a dry towel to wipe his sweat.

“You have three more hours until lunch, Tommy. What would you like to do until then?” Nook asks as he places the bottle back in its holster as he maneuvers his body to block the sun’s heat from beating onto his charge.

Instead of answering, however, Tommy straightens up and starts bolting down the gravel path once more, stunning Nook in surprise before galloping after him. The teen laughs, sounding free instead of the usual chuckle that caused many non-loopers to fear him.

He sounded like a teen having fun.

“Get back here, Tommy! You’re going to overexert yourself!” He hears Nook yell after him. The telltale sounds of feathers flapping cause him to look up and see dark red wings swoop over the realm.

“TUBBO!” He screams as he runs after his best friend, energy seemingly endless as he somehow outruns Nook and follows Tubbo that’s securely within a Phil clone’s arms. The red-wearing clone named Philip flies lower, just above Tommy’s head.

“Wanna race to the flower fields?” Tubbo asks as he reaches down to grab Tommy, only to have his hands be swatted away. “We can’t. Dream’s using the flower fields today, remember?”

“Oh, right,” is all Tubbo says back before another idea pops up in his head. “I bet you that Philip can hunt more food than can Nook!”

Tommy playfully scowls at him, “Just because you made Philip more bird than human by giving him talons and weird body feathers doesn’t mean he’s great at it! Race you to the hunting realm!” Without missing a step, Tommy turns around and manages to pull himself up to Nook’s back when the robotic centaur got close enough. Nook slowed a bit but then quickly picked his speed back up upon hearing Tommy’s command to race Philip.

Philip flexes his talons as he looks down to meet Nook’s gaze, a competitive glint shining in his dark imperial blue eyes before he zooms ahead, following the pathways rather than flying over everything to make things fair.

The two teens let out a few more laughs and taunts as they travel across the palace grounds to a bridge that stretches between their floating island and another, although this island held neon green grass and dirt paths that each lead to a swirling portal of varying colors and decorated in theme to what realm they lead to.

They rapidly approach a large twisting apple tree that holds a portal of swaying shades of yellow and enter through it. The yellows part away from their vision like mist and they’re greeted with a forested area with an abundance of wildlife as well as fruits and vegetables that are hidden above and below them.

They have Charlie to thank for being able to create their own realms.

Charlie spends his self-indulge hours in the comfort of his green and chocolate-brown room, which is a weird mix of a bedroom and a library with a staircase hallway that connects to Interlude’s main library which is located underground.

He doesn’t sort the libraries as much, not anymore ever since he got a Karl (that he named Null) to sort through them for him as Interlude writes every single timeline into books and just leaves them all lying around somewhere in the library. Now, he just takes what book he wants and adds them to his own library to read and draw inspiration from. Then one day, he accidentally discovers that they can take items and people out from the very books themselves and create portals to them, but the realms that the portals lead will only act as an extended part of Interlude, which is disappointing, but hey, free space and more room.

Was that all they did with the new knowledge? Absolutely not. Charlie managed to obtain a touchscreen phone that somehow still connects to a modern-day loop and has since created some interesting loops, ranging from impressive to flat-out strange.

The others didn’t bother getting a phone of their own as they weren’t as interested, but they do borrow Charlie’s phone from time to time with Dream using it the least and Ranboo the most next to Charlie himself.

At some point in time, Charlie and Ranboo made an account on this website called Tumblr and frequented Pinterest for more inspiration. Outside of loop ideas, the internet is just plain entertaining to the slime entity as it seemingly endlessly fuels his curiosity.

Then there's this website called Archive of Our Own, a digital library filled with fanfiction where he discovered that their stories and loops are being written and recorded by a user named KittyLilyHeart, and down in their comments, are people who voiced their liking to their work. There are even some suggestions! He's most definitely writing those down.

Suffice to say, Charlie’s having a great time with it whenever he has nothing to do.

Charlie’s Karl strolls in to take a pile of books left on the floor by his bedside. This Karl has pure white eyes that would have been invisible if it weren’t for the black rings that outlined his iris, his casual clothing now recolored to be black with white stripes and swirls. Black spirals are painted on his cheeks, an empty smile frozen on his face as he balances the piled books onto his arms and silently makes his way to the staircase.

Simple changes, but it was one Charlie is satisfied with as it mildly reminded him of his good friend, Ranboo.

Thinking of Ranboo, he wonders what he’s doing now. Jumping up from his bed, his formless slime body hops after Null while being careful so as to not shatter his phone and glasses that float in his body. He doesn’t need to pretend to be human around his family.

“Null!” The Karl clone stops and turns fully to face his figure of authority. “Take me to Ranboo!” Charlie slithers up his leg and settles himself on the clone’s hood, using it as a makeshift hammock. Null then turns and continues his venture down to the main library.

The staircase that’s lit with yellow-tinted bulbs leads them to a corridor that eventually stops to reveal a vast library with floating candles of varying colors and natural light filtering in through the glass and water above, a few times being shadowed by a little fish or a clone that swims through the windows to look down and monitor the library.

Null’s feet bounce and echo around them as he travels through the maze-like library to then find himself at the center part of it where he can see a large round table, on it are many unsorted books found, waiting to be sorted into the proper shelves. The glass in the ceiling right above the table does not block out water like the others, instead, it blocks out leaves and vines, lighting the area in enchanting streaks of gold light.

Charlie peeks over Null’s shoulder just as his stoic companion quietly places his handful of books to add to the pile already on the table to find Ranboo on the other side of the table, his back turned to them as he glides his hand across the leather spines of countless books, most likely searching for specific ones to create new realms to spice up Interlude, as is how he usually spends his self-indulge hours as he finds it rather therapeutic and calming, a much-needed break from their exciting and usually face-paced activities in the timelines they play.

A Quackity that goes by the simple nickname Q emerges from between tall bookshelves carrying other found and unsorted books and places them on the circular table. He wore a dark purple butler suit and an enchanted cloak made to look like yellow wings that can transform into the feathered limbs they are made to mimic. He sorts the piles and gathers what he picks to then fly up to the higher shelves to slot in some books and switch some others around.

With a few books now in a neat little pile on his hand, Ranboo snaps his fingers with the other and Q immediately stops what he’s doing to go to his side. The ender hybrid wordlessly places the books onto his awaiting hands then pulls out a checklist and pen. As he turns around, he looks up and lets out a surprised enderman sound at seeing Null and Charlie just staring at him. “H-how long have you been watching me?” He asks while placing a hand over his chest.

“3 minutes,” Charlie replies without pause. “Any new builds you need help with?” Ranboo lets out a breathy laugh at Charlie’s indifference of unintentionally scaring him. It was just like how they acted earlier on in The Beginning era.

“I’m planning to move the spring to an entirely new realm. It’s not like we’re using any other scents for leisure time.”

“Oooh! Good point!”

Lucid quietly closes the book titled Twisting the Loops in his hands. His head slightly turned to his right as the light sounds of panting broke the serene atmosphere that cloaked his dark living room lounge. He lets out a low hiss of annoyance at being interrupted. Why must the roaches be so insistent?

The echoes of footsteps stop at the doorway, gasps of air now loud and prominent from the intruder behind him.

“Many have failed before you,” Lucid’s voice is low and calm, yet it's filled with venom that has claimed many lives before. “Why must you insist on meddling with my universes?”

“These are not yours, Lucid. It never was,” the other bites back, stupidly courageous to go up against a brilliant time tinkerer such as himself.

“These universes are fragments of my universe of origin. These are mine and will always be mine.” Although it has been only a moment, he has had enough in entertaining this lowly bug. He waves a dismissive hand at his feet, and the intruder is gone through a ripple. He’s sure his main source of entertainment’s pets would enjoy being rewarded by taking care of a pesky realm invader.

Foreign insects like those are just mere food for the ones inside his isolated terrarium.

When the sky is in pastel shades of pinks, purples, and oranges, everyone meets at the new portal that Ranboo and Charlie created. It is a medium pond of pale purple, surrounding it are specific species of flowers with little bonsai trees that mimicked certain other trees that add to the calming visual and olfactory vibe that they’re going for.

They all carefully sink in and take deep breaths before diving down and entering the portal’s realm, leaving behind their companions whose heads snapped up to look at the palace, a disturbance making its way into the pits of their chests and stomachs as they sense something- or rather someone - that doesn’t belong.

What greets the loopers is a seemingly never-ending flower field of lavenders, roses, and certain scented geraniums. Sandalwood and cedar trees can be spotted here and there as well as large ponds in varying states and colors such as one that’s pastel pink with bubbles and one that’s light orange with steam.

Everyone went their separate ways while Ranboo and Charlie decide to stand back and let them discover their newly made paradise of leisure.

Tubbo runs off into the distance to a tree and discovers that it contains bath bombs and soap, available in primarily calming nature scents of their preference, but that is not what caught his eye. What caught his eye is a beehive that he inspected and found out that it contains honey-scented products and actual honey stored within. When he ran through the fields of flowers, he also came across soft and/or fluffy plushies and little animals from furry cats to baby puppies.

Dream discovers a low-lying blue cloud that floats just above a baby blue pond and manages to climb on and discover it is filled with blue leisure items such as candles and lotions that’s either blueberry or raspberry scented. He accidentally knocks a blue bath bomb off and it immediately started reacting with the water. Dream sees something reflecting light and jumps right in the cool bubbling waters. He pops back up and finds a ring that’s decorated with little diamonds and a large sapphire.

Tommy dive bombs into a red steaming pond, enjoying the spring’s heat as he swims up and to the edge where he can sit back and relax. The mist from the water has a citrus scent to it, causing Tommy to relax deeper into the pond. Opening his eyes, he sees a large lilypad with materials for fiber crafts. When they all regroup again, Tommy is going to tackle Charlie and Ranboo into a hug once leisure hours are over.

The intruder runs as fast as he could through the palace halls, a sense of deja vu momentarily washing over him when he hears the sounds of footsteps right behind him. He momentarily slides on the clean white tiles of the floor as he turns a corner, only to then be tightly embraced by someone identical to him.

His face is uncomfortably close to a near mirror image to himself, almost touching noses when he's suddenly yanked up into the air by Philip's feet, his sharp talons digging painfully and firmly in his shoulders. A doppelganger that looks like his fiance flies in and snatches him the feet. Q and Philip begin flapping back, and the intruder lets out a scream as he feels himself being torn apart. Even being split into two, his organs hanging from his torso, the clones around him are not yet done. Nook angrily stomps on him whilst Wilfred tears at his arms whenever he gets the chance, taking a piece of him and slowly devouring him.

Null melts into black sludge and sinks into the floor where he stood, having no intentions to be involved in the blood bath than he already had by stopping the intruder from rounding the corner as he would rather observe and record the scene in his notebook from a distance, then clean the mess once they're done.

No need to disturb the masters of such trivial matters, especially in their leisure time.

Chapter Text

The Nightmare SMP is a public server that’s notorious for housing dark and morally gray individuals that is, strangely enough, watched over by the unpopular bucket of sunshine that is Nightmare with his two ‘friends’ by his side.

Sapnap (affectionately nicknamed Sapling by Nightmare) is described as some weird and cowardly treehugger that’s only truly loyal to all things nature such as trees and animals and is a pussy when it comes to fire heat and fire such as the Nether. Nightmare is just someone he sees that can help protect his claimed forest (at least that's what he wants everyone to believe).

George (nicknamed Gogs), on the other hand, is fiercely loyal and aggressive, perhaps even controlling at certain points in time from what people can observe from his interactions with Nightmare. He hates being given items as he sees it as a form of pity and has stated before that he hated the Admin’s guts, which is strange to many as he’s very hostile to whoever comes near Nightmare while he’s in the area.

When people look at the trio and the SMP, they think that Nightmare’s predicament is some form of punishment, others saw it as a way for him to realize that the world is not all happiness and rainbows that he was led to believe when he was a child.

When people first joined, they just went about their own thing, completely ignoring Nightmare unless he was of use to them, which he didn’t seem to mind, seeing the situation as just him providing for friends or them being busy,

Nobody is willing to admit that maybe he’s worming his way past their walls and that’s a secret that practically all of them are going to bring into their graves.

Then arise the first nation that got its independence with no issue.

Manberg is a totalitarian nation with a monopoly in drug trades that Willem calls potions around Nightmare. He likes bragging about how he’s gotten all buddy-buddy with the server’s Admin until he realized just how buddy-buddy they actually are when Tommy pointed out how he kept giving discounts to him specifically and gave him actual potions instead of the drugs they sold, the fact that Nightmare gave him the nickname “Wilbur” or “Wilburn” because of how much he enjoyed blowing and burning things up, and the fact that when Nightmare first met Thomas alone, he kept talking about the things he heard Willem say and even gave him the nickname “Tommy”, thinking that they, too, were friends just through Willem’s interactions.

That is a secret that the people of the nation knows but are not going to mention unless they want to face the questionably sane dictator's wrath (which is more of a nausance and annoyance most of time but are unwilling to test their luck).

Then came more individuals that practically ruined the strange peace for actual peace. Schlatt is an impressively muscular man with an equally impressive mind who somehow convinced everyone to go against Willem and Thomas and drove them away from their own nation and reform it into a proper one (or at least as proper as he can get it) with the help of his son, Toby.

When conflict began, Nightmare is there to provide for both sides, unsurprisingly, as he’s easy to trick into thinking that they’re just making some elaborate training scenario for the less experienced such as himself. He did, at some point, side with the now renamed nation known as L’Manberg for the promised training sessions until he’s dragged into Pogtopia for more training by George who’s siding with them.

As you can tell, he’s just going to be involved with the other side even if he did choose one. Plus, there’s the added fact that he’ll feel guilty for leaving people out.

At the end of it, Pogtopia failed and the people who opposed the now peaceful and prospering nation were held in house arrest and therapy was given which were provided by a former(?) investigative torturer known as Quackstie and a retired soldier named Techoshield.

Why couldn't they get an actual therapist and instead get people who’re in the gray area in terms of morals? They have no clue where to get one as therapists in the emotional or mental category are somewhat hard to find and none of them are acquainted with one and aren’t very trusting to get one to begin with.

Nightmare, of course, bounced around to help clean up the craters and visited those in arrest whilst doing whatever it is he does outside of the conflicts, and many of the forcefully reforming villains begrudgingly admits that he’s a boost of morale.

Things have been going for the better, surprisingly enough, even with new people arriving to see what the fuss is about or are there to start new conflicts, it usually concludes on a neutral note at worst and a positive one at best.

There’s also a silent agreement to not get Nightmare involved in any shady business as much as possible, with individuals who see each other as enemies pretending to be friends around Nightmare that may or may not later develop as a complicated love-hate relationship (Willem and Quackstie).

Although thankfully, they don’t have to pretend as long and frequently anymore ever since General Puffy came to the server and trained Nightmare herself, seeing him unfit to the normal standards of an Admin in terms of physique and took it upon herself to toughen him up a bit without actually being too hard on him (Heichdee bless whoever called her).

After everything settled, the people of the server were content in living their lives in peace (while doing their work).

Or as peaceful one can live in a server mostly filled with people of various dark backgrounds, said people also having to live with three teens called that are called the chaos trio as a collective that’s composed of the braincell of the group that is Thomas, the loud and chaotic Toby, and a stoic ghast/enderman hybrid named Manachrum.

Then a new person’s presence was discovered and it spread like a controlled wildfire as people whispered the news to each other. Whether they’re enemies that managed to live together or just be good unlikely acquaintances, one can agree that they’re a network of individuals united in their server, the more naive may even call them family, so when they hear that someone new has joined the server (nevermind it being public as the server is barely known in the Hub, its existence buried under the more famous and infamous servers such as 2b2t), they get a bit defensive.

They fondly curse Nightmare for making them soft and for the other goody two shoes that might have assisted in softening their souls.

Charlen sneaks onto the world’s spawn point, which is a clearing located in the middle of a snowy forest biome with a sign that says that the forest belonged to Sapnap and to not harm any nature as its part of his territory.

From the clearing, there’s a dirt road that directly leads them to a little neighboring area where they assume the first few people that joined the server live. They walk past the houses, choosing to ignore Sapnap’s watchful eyes and George’s glare as they continue to follow the path down to the only nation the server has.

When they arrived and are spoken to, it’s expected with judging eyes and distrusting tones as they familiarize themselves with the nation and be at least acquainted with its people. They did manage to buy some food items from several vendors as well as a quick stop in Niki’s meatery restaurant.

Then when they finally came to their final destination, a house deep within L'Manberg. They approach its steps when they’re stopped by Sam- who they’re pretty sure goes by Samvel in this timeline- with a shimmering trident leveled to their throat. “State your business with the Admin.”

“Oh? The Admin lives here? Thank you for informing me.” Charlen casually pushes the trident away, leaving behind skin-tone slime residue on its surface. The display seems to have rubbed the former villains the wrong way but are unwilling to cause a scene with Nightmare in the area to see it.

Charlen brushes past the former warden of an inhumane prison and marches right up to the door, delicately and quietly knocking on the wood and somehow Nightmare’s attention. Even Samvel couldn’t hear the knocks himself, and he’s at the bottom of the staircase which is literally just six steps.

“Charlen! Nice to see you! Come in, come in!” Nightmare excitedly drags the slime humanoid in and shuts the door behind them.

The people close to Nightmare’s house can very faintly hear him excitedly talk to this person who they assume is a friend of his, but if they’re anything like the few that joined and expected to win big bucks and have later left (or have been killed), then they'll show this low-life his place.

Secrecy, although well-practiced, can tear them apart if too much is kept hidden.

And for all they know, this newcomer could be hiding more than just one secret to specifically tear Nightmare apart.

If only they knew how true those suspicions were sooner.

When Philmore first entered this lowly server, he didn’t expect much as he was kept updated by Willem and nothing about it caught his interest.

That was until his son’s letters became less frequent to his liking.

Then the last letter he received is one saying that he’s staying in the server as it had more resources and opportunities than what his hardcore worlds could provide.

He alerted his wife of where he was venturing before going to find out for himself what his impulsive son had meant.

Sure enough, he was not disappointed, rather he was surprised to see the familiar faces of those he worked with: Niki, a famed murderer and butcher, Manachrum, a young and efficient spy, Conner, a young adult who he personally trained and became an excellent asset to his work, and even Technoshield, all of which has decided to settle in this plain server.

His investigation led him to the Admin who he deems harmless and not at all easy to intimidate for the strange reason of thinking that it was an alternate game of peek-a-boo.

It infuriated him to be respected for the wrong reasons until Willem demonstrated his willingness to give him just about anything he wanted in exchange for company. By then, that’s when he realized how useful Nightmare can be.

Nobody is surprised, rather they were amused upon noticing that Philmore has yet to leave after a week has passed.

Yet another player who fell victim to Nightmare’s rare innocence.

Although, unlike most villains, Nightmare started seeing him as a father, shockingly enough. Is Philmore honored? No (that’s a lie), but he’s willing to entertain the man for more gain.

People who are close or have worked with Philmore have known that he prefers consistency. He gets upset when things suddenly change or are not on schedule and will want to know why.

Willem stopped sending letters as he originally demanded and he came into the server.

And now, Nightmare barely visits the dark forest to disrupt the quiet atmosphere that he once associated as being peaceful, now it feels lonely and oppressive.

Philmore places his book down with a loud thud, his leathery wings flared out to show his agitation. He leaves his base that hangs at the side of a mountain and flies off.

Surely the people of this server can provide the answers he wants as they’ve been taking care of his surrogate son resource powerhouse before him.

“You want us to do what now?” Toby pauses his routine of brushing the fur of his war hounds to squint up at Willem.

“Check on the new player that joined.”

“Slimecicle? Why?”

“You know how we behave around here, Toby. Nightmare is essentially the last few weaklings out there that are useful. We can’t lose our major resource in supplies to someone who could be our enemy.”

“Relax, Wil,” Thomas says as he casually walks up to Toby’s side and sits down next to him. “You’re just being paranoid as usual, and we know that you’re just as soft for Nightmare as the rest of us are.”

“Wha- I am not!”

Thomas rolls his eyes when Willem stomps the compacted soil beneath his feet with his fists clenched at his sides, reminiscent of a child at the beginning of a tantrum.

“If you’re so worried, go check on the General.”

“Oh yeah! Nightmare always visits thera-Puffy’s physical therapy otherwise she’d be thera-pissed that he missed it.”

Thomas lets out a quiet snort. “Never say anything that stupid again.”

“You laughed. It says a lot about your humor Mister Mature-man,” Toby retorts, earning another snort from his friend.

Willem lets out a huff when he’s left out of their conversation and turns to leave, the ends of his shredded and slightly burnt trench coat flowing dramatically behind him as he stomps away.

“Fuckin’ drama queen.” Toby then resumes brushing his war hounds when the one on his lap lets out a bark.

When they're both sure that Willem has left, Thomas takes out a little bottle from his inventory and hands it to one of Toby's dogs. "You know who to give it to." The dog lets out a bark before taking the little bottle in its mouth then sprinting off into the dense, dark woods.

Nightmare sits in a rocking chair on Technoshield’s front porch, absentmindedly rocking back and forth as he stares out into the vast forest that is the dark oak forest.

The retired veteran comes out with a tray holding two glasses and a pitcher filled with beetroot juice. He carefully sets it down on a stool between Nightmare’s rocking chair and his own chair before settling down.

The quiet shared between them may be the same, but how they view it is entirely different.

To Nightmare, it’s peaceful as he moves his frowning black mask up to reveal his bruised lips as he picks his glass up to drink the cold red beverage, not worrying much about spilling a few droplets as his clothes are red instead of green. Enjoying his time relaxing before Charlen comes and collects him.

To Techno, it’s worrying as Nightmare’s known to be able to keep a one-sided conversation going that ultimately updates everybody of what’s happening to the server. Now after day three since Slimecicle’s arrival, he has since gotten quieter. Completely out of character to how he would normally behave.

To the voices in his head, it’s maddening. Having a positive voice around them was something new, a rare find in this world filled with bloodshed and death, a gentle voice that filled the silence so that they wouldn’t have to simmer and scream in despair as they recall dark memories of Techno’s past that, to this day, still haunts him.

On the sixth day when Nightmare started interacting with the foreigner was when the early risers such as Techno were greeted with a death message of someone they vowed to shelter from the dangers outside the server that may find its way in.

Nightmare was squashed by a falling anvil whilst fighting Slimecicle.

It caused some of those the early risers such as Willem to let out a shrill shriek that awoke those in L’Manberg and see the message for themselves, and it certainly sparked a fuse within them.

The death system in this server is slightly different from what they’re used to. It is possible to die without it taking a canon life. Those deaths won't show in the server's chat.

And deaths that do take canon lives will alert everyone of it.

Schlatt, despite being a good man and president, can’t do anything to a crowd of enraged reformed villains, but what he can do is keep watch of Nightmare whilst others release their wrath in their own ways, even if said ways are things that he doesn’t approve of.

And now here is the Admin, being accompanied by various different people acting as glorified babysitters to the most likely traumatized Admin as his change in demeanor causes discomfort in those who saw him.

Today is Techno’s turn, and although he’s hesitant to pick up a weapon, he’s willing to put up with it if it means protecting a friend.

The few residents of the server that dislike (and perhaps even fear) the things that are new, unknown, and uncharted may be seen as silly, but in a server like this, many can say that it is justified if it involved the once naive Admin,

The former villains may not know how to comfort others that aren’t themselves, but they sure as hell do know how to get rid of a problem that disrupts their peace in their haven.

As the sun sets, casting an orange light onto the cottage where the Admin and retired veteran reside, the voices in the latter’s head wish those who seek vengeance good luck and to be careful.

Charlen happily skips around in their new skirt made of the skin of a certain Admin, loudly humming to themself as they go deeper into the forest where he’s sure Nightmare is currently hiding.

They abruptly stop and still, a smile frozen on their face as they feel eyes burn into the back of their head. With a quick snack of a chorus fruit, they teleports four blocks backward just in time to see Philmore land heavily onto their previous spot.

“Hello, Philmore,” Charlen does a grand bow, voice mockingly polite. “It’s an honor to finally meet Madam Demise’s lover.”

“I do not wish the same to sludge like you,” the bat-hybrid responds as he swings around with a sword in hand. Charlen lets the sword slice through them, their slime body quickly stitching itself back together, although the same cannot be said for their shirt.

“Oh don’t be like that, Devil of Darkness!” beamed Charlie as they equip a shield and block the next swing of his sword. “I’m sure Nightmare will be upset if he hears you calling me names once I take him from Technoshield's care.”

“How do you know where he is?” Philmore demands as he forces Charlen back with each swing, growing annoyed at their nonchalant appearance.

“I have eyes everywhere, Philmore. It’s only a matter of time until we reclaim what’s ours.” Charlen laughs as they splash a potion of blindness at Philmore’s face, causing him to step back and instinctively cover his eyes in a futile attempt to shield them.

“You ooze-dripping thief! Just wait until we get your hands on you!” He hissed, the sound of his voice bouncing against the surfaces of his surroundings and echoing back into his ears, quickly locating Charlen’s fleeing form that’s nearing where Technoshield’s cottage is.

“‘We’? My, my! It's not just you that's awfully attached to something valuable!” Philmore chases after their voice, dodging trees and low-hanging branches as he goes. “I wanted the Admin before but now? I want him more if he’s really that valuable to so many!”

A woman with patches of red scales quietly hums to herself as she chops mushrooms and dandelions on a chopping board to then place them all in a boiling pot. Another woman, much older and certainly much colder, comes walking in with a satyr man in curly dark cobalt hair and a yellow sweater.

“Hello, Samsulia, Fredrick. What brings you here with no warning?” asks the woman who continues to cook lunch for her and her family, unsurprised that they somehow managed to break into her house again.

“We thought to accompany you here as our husband and son, as well as her birdbrain of an ex-spouse, are investigating a new person on the server,” answers the man named Fredrick as he leans on the kitchen’s island.

“So I’ve heard.”

“Paranoia runs in the family, I supposed.” Samsulia examines her newly polished black nails, admiring how it looks with her shiny gray dress as she leans against the kitchen’s archway, unphased of their husbands’ absences.

“Speaking of family, how’s Kerstin? I don’t believe I’ve heard from her for a long while.”

“She’s busy with the whole god business going on now that Philip and I decided to take a break from hunting players who’ve escaped her grasp.”

Fredrick turns to the ice witch with a raised brow. “People are still doin’ that?”

“Wouldn’t you?” Samsulia retorts back.

“No, I wouldn’t. I’ve been in limbo several times and believe me when I say that the afterlife is an enjoyable place to stay in.”

“Oh, right. You and your atrociously good luck at getting yourself in dangerous situations and getting yourself killed.”

“And the fact that I’m on good terms with the family just like the rest of you lot,” Fredrick adds with a smirk. “I doubt you forgot that we’re guaranteed to have paradise after we die when Lady Death gave us her blessing.”

“Now, now, let’s not get too feisty before lunch. The food’s ready.” the fish-scaled woman says as she prepares three wooden bowls to hold the newly made mushroom stew. The two guests jokingly insult her on the way out, and once they’re out of sight, she mixes little pieces of red tulips that blend in well with the red mushrooms.

She places them all on a tray to carry them easier and serves the guests with their bowls, making sure that the one with tulips is in front of Fredrick.

When they all began eating as they gossiped, Fredrick slowly became less vocal as he felt his body become sluggish and heavy. He only glares at his wife who only smiles back at him.

“'Let’s not be too feisty’, you said. Then you come and weaken me with stew.”

Samsulia lets out a laugh as she pats his back a bit harshly. His glare then goes over to the ice witch beside him. “I told you she’s the dom of your relationship, you bratty sub.”

Despite looking very angered, Fredrick’s face flushes a distinct red, much to the ladies’ amusement.

“You sockeye salmon-looking bitch-”

“-that you love just as much as the arsonist idiot that we call our husband.” Sallyanne finishes for him as she takes his spoon, scoops up the stew with shredded petals, and feeds her other husband. Fredrick eats the stew with no other comment, quietly grumbling to himself as Samsulia laughs at the slouched and humiliated state that he’s in.

Chapter Text

The air in the Courthouse is tense once it has been decided that Dream is to be let out of the prison and instead be in exile, the location of which are to be picked by Tommy, Tubbo, and Ranboo, with monthly check-ins by at least two people that’s not Sam or Quackity as they are no longer trusted due to the evidence that Tommy somehow managed to obtain (thanks to Charlie).

Throughout the entire thing, Dream’s entire demeanor just screamed how tired he is as if his blank and indifferent expression wasn’t enough. He did yawn at some point but that’s all he ever did besides staying still and swaying as if he was about to fall asleep at any moment.

Sapnap can only watch as the man he once saw as a best friend, now reduced to this sorry sight, is guided onto a boat and sailed away by Tommy of all people.

He hopes that they’re not making a mistake.

The first check-in, a month later, is done by Sapnap and Antfrost. They see that the island is a large and flat plains biome as far as the eye can see with a flower field and mountains off in the distance. They also see that Dream is doing fairly well. He lives in a small and minimalistic house that only contained the essentials such as a bed, crafting table, furnace, and a chest containing seeds, vegetation, and meat. Dream himself hasn't said a word to them ever since they arrived as he continued working on his farmland. Sapnap has tried asking him questions, but he got were silence.

An uncomfortably tight feeling forms in his chest as he's reminded of his first visit to Pandora's Vault. Antfrost has just been inspecting the area till then.

The trio was there at the time too, but they weren’t giving him satisfying answers to Sapnap's questions. They were all too vague for his liking yet they insisted that the answers they gave were really all that simple: Dream is doing fine and he’s just working on a farm, nothing else happened.

Despite all the evidence that points to the answers being true, Sapnap couldn’t help but feel like something was off.

Tommy brushes it off, saying that it’s just him being all anxious about what Dream might do while in exile.

Maybe Tommy’s right.

After all, he can very clearly see Dream just working on his crops which are mostly composed of potatoes, and he can smell food that’s cooking in the furnace.

He’s really not doing anything other than simply living.

Sapnap hesitantly leaves with Antfrost at sunset, much to the loopers’ hidden annoyance.

"They better not have to stay the whole day each time," Tubbo huffs as he hollows out a tree and begins digging down.

"They might," Ranboo unhelpfully foreshadows at the tree's entrance. He manages to duck out of the way in time to see an axe flying past his head.

"Don't fucking kill each other," Tommy loudly scolds as he places down an enderchest and takes out his rolled-up tent. "Now help me with this if you're just going to watch your husband work, enderboy."

"Why do we even need a tent when we're making our base underground?"

"So that people won't get suspicious."

"But it's that the point?"

"Not on the first month, dumbass!" Tubbo's voice echoes from the tree.

In the second check-in, Eryn and Connor are the ones who visit the island, weirdly enough, at least to Dream that is.

When they stepped out of the boat, Connor just looked around. Dream didn’t really have anything to hide on the surface, so even if Connor did use his head and actually investigate, he wouldn’t find anything. Then he decided to have a one-sided idle chat with Dream. He hopes this month’s visitors don’t stay as long as Sapnap and Antfrost have been.

Eryn, on the other hand. “Hey, Dream! Tommy, what’s up!” He greets with a wide smile, specks of blood somewhat visible in between his teeth and on his hand as he waves it around.

“Eryn! What’s up man?” Tommy walls over to welcome him, not minding the little splatter of blood on his friend. He has seen worse, and things will be worse later on. “So? Did you get the stuff?”

“Of course, dude!” The half-demon goes through his inventory and proceeds to drop several items such as redstone, planks of varying wood, pearls, shears, ores, and other items that Tommy requested. “What’d you need these for anyway?”

“It’s a surprise,” Tommy easily deflects, “now go look at Dream’s been up to.”

“Oh right! I’m supposed to tell them what’s been happening here. Later, Tommy!” Eryn jogs to Dream’s house, and Tommy hums the tune of Blocks as he sorts through the items and goes over a mental checklist as he does.

Not long later, after Eryn and Connor finally leave on his boat, Tubbo and Ranboo arrive with a skeleton horse named Skellyboo and a spider named Shroud in their boats, an army of wolves that Tommy’s sure belongs to Tubbo, a bat on a lead named Bathew that Tommy can faintly recall Ranboo spent 30 minutes trying to catch at one point.

Tubbo hops out of his boat and takes a breather with his feet on land. “So, how’s the progress?”

“We’re doing good. We got the other stuff from Eryn and Connor didn’t find anything.”

“Tommy, are you sure we can trust Eryn enough to help?” Ranboo questions as he tugs on the lead to make Bathew fly closer to him. “We know he’s your friend and all but, he’s also kind of...chaotic.”

“He has a hard time talking and he’s not the smartest,” Tommy pulls out a lead to take Shroud. “But he’s loyal. He wouldn’t snitch on me, especially if it's a surprise.”

"If you say so, bossman." Tubbo chops down the logs hiding the hollowed tree's entrance and begins leading them down.

"Would now be a good time to act suspicious?" Ranboo asks as he passes Tommy to follow Tubbo.

"Y-yeah, you know what, sure." Tommy shrugs as he takes out his enderchest to take out other items. "With the other materials that we need, there's no way we can collect them without being sus to be being with."

The third check-in rolls in and it is Puffy and Niki who arrives at the island.

Dream, as usual, doesn’t mind the new visitors as he takes care of his farm which the ladies can confusingly see is entirely made of potatoes.

As part of the protocol, they let themselves in Dream’s little shelter and investigate the small space. They only found stone tools minus a sword, and more potatoes, some raw, some cooked, and the majority of them are poisonous.

“Dream?”

“Yes?” The surprise on Puffy’s face disappears as fast as it appeared, obviously not expecting him to talk as he has been mute, according to the previous check-in reports, and the three teens.

“Why are all your food potatoes? Sapnap said that you were doing fine.”

“I am doing fine,” Dream’s crouched form turns to look at the pirate. “Potatoes are the only ones that can grow in this soil as of late.”

Niki looks down at the grass and now sees that each blade is drooping and is in a slightly darker shade of green, almost similar in color to a swamp biome. She looks back at Dream with narrowed eyes.

“It’s not so bad,” Dream reassures his visitors. “I take this as an opportunity to try out potato recipes that Tommy gave me.” He turns back to his crops and pulls out another potato. It’s a poisonous one.

“Speaking of Tommy,” Puffy cuts in. “Where is he?”

“He said that he has some stuff to do. Same with Tubbo and Ranboo.”

“When was that?”

“..three..four...five days ago?”

“You...don’t remember how long ago it was?”

“I don’t.” Puffy stares at Dream’s back as he lets out a yawn. “But they’re probably fine.”

“And if they’re not?”

“I won’t know. I’m in exile, Puffy. I can’t check on them if they're outside my island, and even if they're on my island, I wouldn't know where they are.” Dream lifts and drops his shoulders in a slow shrug. "I haven't done much exploring to know the ins and outs of this place."

Puffy, again, stares at Dream’s back, seemingly deep in thought. Niki takes advantage of the prolonged silence to really look at Dream’s posture. He seems to be loose and tired, almost like when he was first taken out of prison.

“How long ago were you exiled?” He jumps at Puffy’s voice, having been too focused on the sounds underneath him that Puffy and Niki are unaware of.

“I…” Dream pauses to think, his hands frozen in place on the ground to give an illusion that he’s contemplating, “was exiled...months ago, right?"

“How many months exactly?”

“...you would be the third check-in that isn’t the other three so, three months?”

“You’re not sure?”

“No, but does it matter?”

Dream resumes harvesting his potatoes, letting Puffy and Niki walk around to thoroughly investigate again before finally leaving.

Right below the ground where Dream is crouched, he can vaguely hear the sounds of mobs crying in pain as well as the sounds of pots and pans lightly clanking against each other and hushed bickering.

The only things he didn’t lie about are the soil and the potato recipes. He’s intrigued to see what dishes they can make with potatoes, and with the "other ingredients".

The fourth check-up is done by Sam and Foolish as per Puffy’s request and concerns. Sam, as he has worked with Puffy in regards to the Egg, and Foolish, which is the same reason with Sam, with an added reason that he may be useful in spotting any Egg-like instances.

When Foolish arrives, he can immediately sense that there’s something wrong.

For starters, in the earlier months of Dream’s exile, he wore his iconic green hoodie, now he seems to be wearing an orange jumpsuit that reminds him too much of his prison garb.

Then he notices that potatoes were everywhere, some of which are rotting but none are poisonous despite Puffy saying that majority of the ones Dream had during her visit were poisonous.

The grass is much darker, almost purple compared to the healthy and bright green grass that Sapnap said he saw. The little hut that Dream lives in is now, dare he say, looks like a miniature jail cell as it's made with obsidian, the windows of which are made of iron bars, and the door is also made of iron with stone buttons on the side.

Then there are Eryn’s short descriptions of Dream being okay, Tommy being busy, and the weird fact that he saw Ranboo and Tubbo bringing their pets here, a fact that he, at first, saw no importance in mentioning.

Then there’s the other concern that Puffy brought up. She suspects that Dream’s memories have been deteriorating and that he’s been indifferent to the possibility of him developing a memory disorder. Of course, with Dream being the subject, he might be lying.

Lastly, there’s the concern about the trio’s behavior and absence around the server. They appeared less frequently and have been getting quieter and quieter as they crowd around each other until eventually, they just all just vanished. They were last seen a week ago.

Foolish’s eyes scan around the area, seeing nothing but dead potato crops and withering plants and trees. He eyes Sam every once in a while as the anthropomorphic creeper inspects Dream's questionable house.

There’s nothing much he can find, but he can sense a presence that's very similar to the Egg, so he tells Sam to set up a Nether portal for easier access as he approaches Dream, who's just sitting on the ground watching the clouds. Foolish crouches down by his side and gives him an awkward smile. "Hey, buddy. What have you been doing all this time?"

"Oh, nothing. I'm just waiting."

"For who? The trio?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"They told me to."

Foolish's instincts cause him to tense and look around, feeling something watching him. Dream notices and pats his knees in an attempt at comfort. "Don't worry. That's the Overseer. The person you might have to worry about is the Warden."

Foolish looks up at Sam whose back is facing him, but he can tell that he has been listening by the way he freezes. The demi-god looks back down at Dream with wide eyes, "who's the Warden?"

"Tubbo." That causes Sam to fully turn around after lighting the portal. Foolish looks back up at Sam to meet his eyes as silent communication goes back and forth between them. Dream takes a deep breath in and out as he closes his eyes, body aching yet relaxed.

"Where is Tubbo now?" Sam is the one to ask as he breaks eye contact with Foolish to look at Dream.

"He's with Pandora's Vessel."

"And who's that?"

"Tommy."

"You know what, Dream?" Foolish grabs onto his arm and stands up, tugging on it to coax Dream into standing with him. "I think we should move you to a different exile spot, yeah?" More tugging, but Dream doesn't budge, rather he resists. "I'm sure your friends back home miss you."

Dream kicks Foolish in the abdomen and stands up. Sam takes out his new trident (as his previous trident for his warden attire was taken away) and pulls it back to throw. Dream turns to Sam before sprinting off, somehow managing to dodge Sam's trident without looking back. Sam is about to give chase when Foolish raises a hand at him as he wheezes in pain.

"Something is-" Foolish coughs, "something is definitely here, but it's not the Egg."

The people of the SMP step out of the portal with enchanted netherite gear on their person.

Instead of the lively green plains biome, they see a dead land with mycelium as far as they can see. Where Dream's house was is a food van where Tommy's watching them with unblinking eyes and a sharp smile. Tommy in a dark red trench coat with fur lining the collar, his pale skin highlights the bag under his eyes, hair much messier than usual and his head slightly tilted as it rests on his hand while the other lightly taps on the van’s countertop.

Overall, an unsettling sight to see.

“Tommy?” Sam cautiously approaches the van, trident held tightly in his grip.

“Welcome to the island, Sam!” Tommy cheerily greets yet remains unmoving as he meets the creeper hybrid’s eyes.

“Right,” Sam turns back to the group behind him then turns back to Tommy. “Where’s Dream?”

“Daze? He’s in the island and is currently not ready to see anyone.” Tommy places his palms flat on the counter as he leans forward to look down at Sam. “You can wait here and pick from our menu until then!” He waves a hand at the said menu at the sides of the van’s window. Each item on the menu had potatoes in the mix, and the amount of items there are on the menu is impressive many that which cover desserts and beverages, strangely enough.

“‘Our’?” echoes Niki. She couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable at how familiar Tommy is acting.

“As much as I want to take the credit for myself,” Tommy finally gives Sam a break by leaning back and shrugging with his hands up to his shoulders. “I absolutely must share it with my good friends, Tubbo and Ranboo, as well as Daze for being our…” Tommy leans back onto the counter, this time having both his hands support his head as he smiles widely at them once more, a twinkle of gleeful madness in his eyes. “Unenthusiastic taste-tester.”

“‘Unenthusiastic’?” Sapnap steps forward, impatience creeping into his voice. “What do you mean by that?”

“Daze was happy to help at first,” Tommy looks off into the distance as he recalls a fabricated memory that he prepared. “But then we gave him other dishes and he...let’s just say he wasn’t as cooperative and has to be force-fed.”

“Why do you keep calling him ‘Daze’?”

“It’s more fitting for him.” Tommy dismissively shrugs. “Which reminds me,” He ducks behind the counter then comes back up with a little plastic bag containing cookies that look to be covered in...crushed potato chips? “I need to go feed him again. Tubbo and Ranboo have yet to supply enough live mobs for testing purposes.”

He then steps out of the van and to a singular large tree that looks halfway withered, unlike the rest of the leafless trees. He pushes against a piece of bark and a hidden doorway opens up, leading to a tight staircase down with low lighting.

Tommy turns back to the stunned group and quirks a brow at them. “Why are you surprised? I said that Daze is in the island, not on the island.” He then ventures down the staircase. The people in netherite glanced at each other before hesitantly following after him.

The thick scent of copper immediately attacks their noses, causing many to gag and choke at the assault of their sense of smell. Bad very nearly slips on a puddle, the dark corridors doing nothing to help in their vision, yet Tommy marches on just fine.

The corridors get darker and darker until they’re entirely relying on Tommy’s guidance and their sense of hearing.

When their journey in the dark comes to a halt, they hear Tommy pressing buttons and flicking levers. The ground underneath them shakes as something opens, and lights begin to bathe them, finally giving them their vision.

But they don’t believe that it’s a gift when they see what's below them.

Tommy steps forward onto the balcony that overlooks the large, white, spherical room before them, the copper scent from before now much more potent. He carelessly turns the plastic bag he carried upside down, letting the potato chip cookies fall out of sight.

“Tommy,” Quackity is the first to speak. “What is this place?”

“Why Pandora’s Laboratory!” Tommy throws his hands out, his loud voice causing whatever is down below them to let out a whine. “And below us is our beautiful creation, Daze. A creature made according to Pandora’s wishes.”

The wild look in Tommy’s eyes causes the people to tense. Sapnap rushes past him altogether to grip the iron railings and leaned over to look down, and his jaw drops in a silent cry at the thing he sees.

A thin and weirdly elongated body is hunched on the floor, long and black claws tapping along the tiles as it stabs into Tommy’s cookies and feasts. His long, dirty blond hair falls over his face, yet Sapnap can still see his green glowing eyes. Sharp horns curled outwards, dark red stains on the tips of them. Among the horns are two antlers with illuminating cyan fungus stuck to them. A long and thin spiked prehensile tail and six wings drag behind him along the floor, one of his wings in worse shape compared to the others with clear attempts of repairing it with feathers too small for it, now just a messy amalgamation of colors ready to fall apart.

“Isn’t he amazing?” Sapnap pushes himself off the railing and draws out his axe, Tommy remaining too close and unfazed at its blade being dangerously close to slitting his throat. “And all it took are the parts of other mobs and players,” Sapnap walks backward to join the others at the entrance. Tommy, thankfully, doesn’t follow after him. “And Daze has become the perfect monster fit for destruction.”

“Wha- what have you done?” 

“It’s quite simple, Sapnap.” Everyone turns around to see two glowing eyes peer at them from the dark. “We simply took apart Dream and put him back together again in the name of Pandora.” Ranboo calmly explains as he steps forward, carrying behind him is Phil in a patient's garb. “It’s tricky to fix Philza’s damaged wings, but we manage.” Ranboo unceremoniously drops him to the cold ground, causing Phil to let out a gasp of pain as he lands harshly on his back. "Now that he's wingless, his only purpose is to feed Daze."

The hybrids of the group are horrified at Ranboo's indifference to his actions of removing one's nonhuman parts. Some of the hybrids like Ant and Fundy step back, their tails tucked closely behind them as if expecting the ender-hybrid to just suddenly rush at them to take it away.

“At least in this life.” Tubbo, too, steps out into the light, wearing Sam’s old warden armor. Ranboo turns to him with a raised brow. “Pandora is kind enough to give Tommy the knowledge of revival. We can very easily harvest him again with better wings." Tubbo's eyes look away from Ranboo to scan the crowd of intruders. "But enough chit-chat, you’ve seen him as per required for your monthly visits, now leave.”

“No,” Punz glares at Tubbo in defiance. “Whatever this is, needs to stop. The point of his exile was to punish him as humanely as possible, not-” he gestures to the monster that he caught a glimpse at while Tommy was distracted with Sapnap, “-this.”

“You have no say in this, Punz,” Tubbo takes out the Warden’s Trident and harshly taps the ground with it. The figure below them responds with a low bellow followed by the sounds of heavy flapping. Dream arises from his confines as patches of his body light up in cyan, purple particles dancing around him as he snarls at them, rows upon rows of teeth that are forced to fit into his mouth shift and flex. His body twitches with each flap of his wings that are from Phil, a dragon, and a grotesque and stitched amalgamation of feathers, bat wings, and phantom membrane, although they can see the wings originating from Vexes phasing in and out among the mess. Dream's eyes look to be similar to that of eyes of ender, and some think that his eyes are eyes of ender, that his eyes were replaced by them.

“Yes, YES!” Tommy turns to the visitors-now-intruders and points at them. “Tear them apart, Daze! It is time to feast!” The former person once known as Dream lets out a roar as he swoops down to attack.

Some managed to jump out of the way, others tried to block the attack with their shields, only to then be pushed back. Tubbo and Ranboo join Tommy’s side as Dream chases after them, periodically roaring in order to locate them in the dark via echoes. The familiar sounds of teleporting can occasionally be heard from within the dark labyrinth.

“I’d say this experiment is a success.” Ranboo comments, earning a snort from Tubbo and a chuckle from Tommy. "What are we going to call Dream? An amalgamation? He's not exactly a hybrid anymore with the list of mobs we used, including an ender dragon and a warden."

"We stick with calling him Pandora's creation, obviously," Tommy responds as he straightens Wilbur's red-dyed trench coat that he stole from Niki and modified to fit the fur collar that originated from Techno's cape. “Now who are you betting on finding the Preparation Room first?”

It’s fairly easy to get lost in these corridors, Bad realizes as he waves his torch around.

He can see footprints and blood trails on the floor and into doors, and he’s terrified of what he might see behind any of the doors it leads.

It skids to a sudden stop, his ears straining to listen to the faint humming off in the distance. It didn’t sound like anyone he knew, but then again, the sounds are too quiet for him to tell. Risking having his location be found by the trio or Dream, he takes a deep breath and shouts, “Hello?”

“Hello?” An unfamiliar voice calls back, eerily cheery that contrasts the dark, gory labyrinth that he's trapped in.

“Who are you?” Bad manages to voice one of many questions that he has in his head.

“I’m Charlie!” The voice sounds closer, and as the stranger - Charlie - steps into the torch’s light, looking relatively friendly despite having a little splatter of blood on them while wielding a stained iron sword that glistened under the limited light. “What are you doing here? Are you lost?”

“U-uh yes! Yes! I’m lost,” Bad eyes Charlie. He’s not wearing armor, has no hostility in his lax stance, and doesn’t appear to be strong, so with those in mind, Bad felt safe enough to at least give him some of his trust.

“Oh, okay then! Follow me to the exit!” Charlie then steps back into the dark, causing Bad to go after him, fearing that he may lose what may as well be his only chance at getting out of here.

They took twists and turns around similar hallways that made Bad question if Charlie even knew where the exit was, then his slime companion suddenly stops and pushes a door open. He doesn’t step inside until after he felt around for a light switch. Bad snaps his eyes shut at the sudden brightness, lightly hissing in pain as he puts his torch away.

Although, now he wishes that he’s still plunged in the dark.

The skinless remains of animals lay on a pile in a large tray, birds left bald and frozen to death as their plucked feathers have been harvested into jars and sorted in shelves filled with teeth, fangs, and claws, little drops of blood collecting at the very bottom of each container. Ears, tails, and pelts are hung up to dry, taken from little kittens to large horses. On a table are phantom wings, waiting to be dismembered for its membrane, horns from various animals, including a ravager, are also on the table, waiting to be properly cleaned as flesh hangs from where it was once connected to its owners.

Bad’s eyes slowly drift over to a metal machine mounted into the wall with a chute that Bad desperately hopes is for garbage.

“Sorry for the mess. I haven’t gotten around to cleaning this room.” Charlie sheepishly rubs his neck as he takes as many animal carcasses as he can hold and shoves them into the chute. When it’s full, a glass shield slides up and the sounds of sawblades whirling to life begin, making Bad feel nauseous yet he couldn’t take his eyes off of it.

As the bodies are grinded up, Bad can see tubes spraying something into the now black-sludge mix. The machine turns on and takes the sludge away from their sight, and once done, the glass shield drops, ready to process more bodies.

“E-excuse me, Charlie,” Bad stutters as he braces himself against the wall. Charlie hums at him with that terrifyingly innocent smile. “What is this?”

“This is the Preparation Room and that's a body processor for Daze's food,” Charlie answers as he walks across the room to a door that leads to a similar-looking corridor to the one they were in before, only this time it’s clean and brightly lit. “It’s one of many, but this one is mine. Ranboo asked me to help, and I did!”

Bad stares at the room in horror as he lets the information sink in. As much as he wants to forget he ever saw this, the rest of the server needed to know. With a few rounds of breaths and a gulp, he stands upright and speedwalks to the door, not wanting to stay in such a grotesque room any longer.

Charlie shuts the door as he follows after the demon and continues to lead the way to the exit, which is a staircase that leads up to the surface. Right, Bad forgot that they were underground, but how far underground?

Bad thanks Charlie then hastily goes up, getting increasingly dark as he ascended. When he takes a bubble elevator that leads him to a dirty lake up on the surface, he discovers that it’s night, and there’s not a single sound to be heard other than disturbed water and his pounding heart.

No wind, no mob, just him in the middle of this cursed island. But it’s alright, better here than the horrific environment that is below them or being alone with Charlie. Bad really thought that Charlie was safe, however - “You have such a nice tail and horns, Bad. I’m sure Daze would love to have them.” - Charlie just proved to him that even he can’t be trusted.

He hopes the others found their way out.

Chapter Text

A strong blast sends people off-balance, some even stumbling to the floor, as thick smoke and dust momentarily cover the banquet and its guests.

Once the smoke clears, Charlie walks in while gently tugging Dream along by the arm, Ranboo having a hand on the Admin’s back as he follows along. Tubbo and Tommy walk just slightly behind them, covering their backs and sides.

They all completely ignore everyone until Sam yells out, "Tommy! What are you doing!?"

"Something that's going to make things a thousand times more thrillin’," was all Tommy says before Tubbo cuts in, "Quackity, Purpled, and Techno are hiding in the wall over there," he points whilst shoving Ant and Punz out of the way to where Bad is currently standing with his other hand,

Sure enough, the three mentioned step out, each with their own set of emotions written in their expressions.

"Bruh," is all Techno says in a deadpan as numerous dogs flood out of their hiding spot to trail the anarchist. Purpled just looks bewildered while Quackity’s stares at the five, wide-eyed as he processes the sudden change of events and at the sight of Dream.

"Hello, Badboyhalo from Eggpire! Can we talk to the Egg?" asks Charlie once he's in front of the demon. Bad's eyes widen in surprise then smiles in joy. "Of course! Feel free to do so."

"Good." Ranboo quickly takes out two splash potions from his inventory and then proceeds to smash them over the cult leader's head. Charlie pushes the weakened and slowed demon away from the Egg just as Ant and Ponk jolt out of their shock and lunge at them. Tommy and Tubbo were ready and slammed similar potions at them, then shoved them away to have some distance between the Eggpire members and the loopers.

"Go ahead, Dream. You can do this," Tubbo encourages as he menacingly surveys the room, particularly watching over the armed ones.

Puffy cautiously approaches as she eyes the formerly-imprisoned man as she speaks to the teens in a gentle yet shaky voice. "Tubbo, why are you here? Why is Dream here?"

Instead of answering, however, Tubbo abruptly takes out an enchanted axe that many recognize as Dream's Nightmare axe and assumes a battle stance when he feels that the sheep hybrid is too close for comfort. "This is just business, Puffy."

A white glow covers him, Tommy, and Ranboo, and it quickly dissipates to reveal netherite armor, each piece enchanted. “Hurry up, Dream!” Tommy yells out to the man behind him. He nods as he places his hands on the Egg’s surface.

A moment later, Ant and Bad, the two most affected by the Egg, clutch their heads and scream out in pain. The Egg itself seems to be vibrating and cracking as its vines begin to curl and wither.

“What the fuck is he doing?!” exclaims Quackity

When the Egg finally cracks open under Dream’s hand, a large white datura flower blooms in its place, green vines sprouting around it as the Flower lowers itself for Dream to step in and get himself comfortable.

Taking advantage of the shared startling state of many, the rest of the loopers run to quickly hitch a ride inside the Flower, laughing along as they waved at the guests and the former members of the Eggpire. Sam rushes for them but the Flower is faster as it closes its petals and digs itself into the ground, shaking the entire room as it borrows away with its vines, leaving behind a trail of dirt and cobblestone as it flees.

“The roof is caving in!” Puffy shouts out in alarm, causing everyone to look up and see cracks forming and pebbles falling. Quackity lets out a curse, “Everyone, follow me!”

While it’s good that nobody else died, they can agree that perhaps the situation just became worse and more complicated.

Meanwhile, the loopers hop off their ride when they’ve reached their destination, which is in Dream’s mountain base where he once hid everyone’s attachments.

“It worked! It fuckin’ worked!” cheers Tommy as he runs around the Flower, examining it and marveling at how more animated it is compared to the Egg that just sits on one spot and does nothing.

The Flower’s vines curl around the floor, loosely circling each looper’s feet, seemingly pleased to have them around it.

“I knew you could do it, World!” Charlie pats Dream’s head. The Admin doesn’t comment on it, instead, he looks around his unused base, disturbed dust floating in the air, causing him to let out a sneeze.

“Alright!” Tubbo claps his hands together, getting all attention onto him (including the Flower). “The guys back in the mainland are probably planning on taking us down. We better get working if we want to attack first!”

And everyone’s off to the only Nether portal that’s somehow still activated till this day, leaving Dream alone with the Flower with nothing else to do…Unless…Turning to the reactivated portal and the elevator that he doubts will be used as the Flower’s vines can get them up and down faster, he wonders what he can do to change this place as it reminds him too much of the prison.

A vine gently taps him on the shoulder, bringing him out of his head as he turns to the Flower. “Umm,” he feels the vine pushing him towards it as the Flower leans forward. With a small smile, he caresses its petals. “Mind helping me redecorate?” The Flower sways up and down in resemblance to a nod. “Alright, let’s get to work then.”

“Alright, so,” Ranboo looks down at his checklist, “do we have my totems?”

“Check,” Tubbo confirms as he stuffs them in the ender chest.

“Gapples?”

“Both regular and enchanted,” says Tommy as he leans against the wall to take a breather after hurriedly raiding Techno and Phil’s houses. “I also got his emeralds. Pig boy’s rich.”

“And his potions?” asks Ranboo as he crosses out the items they have.

“Of course, enderboy. You think I’m an idiot?”

“Eh, sometimes.”

“Wha- HEY-!”

Ranboo casually yells over Tommy, “DO WE HAVE GHOSTBUR?”

Tubbo also casually yells over Tommy as he continues to scream out a colorful array of swears, “YES WE DO!” He makes jazz hands over to a blindfolded, gagged, and hogtied Ghostbur that’s securely strapped on Carl, one of Techno’s horses, and beside said horse is Friend who's confusingly looking between his ghostly companion and at the loopers.

“Shouldn’t we get Techno’s villagers?”

“We’ll most likely be spotted if we travel with an entire group of villagers, plus it’ll be tricky going through the Nether.”

The trio continues to go back and forth as they make their way across the tundra to a new portal that they hid under a mountain. They have no idea where Charlie went but they hope that he doesn’t get caught as they’re pretty sure the server saw him accompany them, even if he wasn’t armed at the time.

When they got to where the portal that leads to Dream’s mountain base is supposed to be, it is broken down to one block and is in the process of being destroyed. The obsidian crumbles under Dream’s strike with a diamond pickaxe and then proceeds to wipe away sweat from his brow and stretches his back, fatigued and aching as his body grew unused to doing anything that didn’t involve sitting or aimlessly walking in a small obsidian box.

Dream’s head whips around at Tommy’s shouts as he races down the path, leaving the other two to deal with their stolen stuff (plus Ghostbur and Friend).

“Dream!” Tommy skids to a stop right in front of the former prisoner. “What are you doing? How are we supposed to get back without the portal?!”

Dream lifts up a hand to make Tommy quiet down, both ignoring the fact that the former twitched. “I made a new one that’s a lot more hidden,” He wills his pickaxe back into his inventory and begins walking to what at first looks to be a wall of netherrack, but when Dream got close to it, the wall reveals to be the Flower’s vines covered in a layer of netherrack debris. The revealed entrance goes down a short hall with a portal at the end.

Dream turns back at the trio and waves an arm for them to come. “Hurry before anyone sees you.” Nobody mentions how he excluded himself as they lead Carl and Friend down and into the pathway, the vines closing the entrance behind them and effectively camouflaging their tracks.

“How did you set this up? We weren’t even gone for that long,” Tubbo tilts his head as he tugs on Carl’s and Friend’s lead.

“Please don’t tell me you dug out this tunnel all by yourself,” Ranboo turns to Dream, the mask cracked and broken down to only covering his left eye.

An awkward pause stretches out between them, causing the trio to stop just in front of the portal and look back at Dream. The man looks up from the ground and answers quietly, “The Flower helped.”

“Why did- why did it take you that long to answer?” Tommy squints his eyes at him. “Kinda seems sus, don’t you think?”

Another long pause.

“You’ll see.”

See they did.

When they arrive back at the base, instead of the oppressive and intimidating black color scheme that they’re all familiar with, they find blinding and equally intimidating white. Across from them, instead of the hallway splitting into two, they see that the entire place just opens up in a half-circle with the Flower at the very back of the large room across from them, two beams of light green shooting up to the sky on either side of the sentient plant. The Flower’s vines spread out displayed on the walls and floor, acting as decor. They can see that the walls have other Nether portals, none of which are activated except for one.

The trio’s mouths dropped at the massive up change of their base, not that it’s a bad change as it offers them more space, no. They're surprised that Dream, someone who they’re pretty sure is still physically weak, somehow made all this happen in a day.

“I also made this,” the three’s heads whirl around to find Dream holding up a white flag with a flower outlined in faded red with eight leaves at the flower’s side. “Since the Egg had a flag, I thought why not you?”

Again, they don’t pay mind to the fact that Dream excluded himself. “And we needed a banner anyway for shields. Shields with banners have more absorption compared to shields without them.”

Tommy loudly inhales deeply as he brings his clasped hands up to his mouth before exhaling equally as loud. “How the fuck? We weren’t gone for a day!”

“The Flower is a lot more helpful than the Egg.” As if on cue, the Flower’s petals bounce up and down like an excited little child having made their parents proud. Well, Dream did create it, and the Flower is only a day old as of today, so technically that metaphor is true..?

“You didn’t sprain anything, did you?” Tubbo’s eyes scan Dream’s body and posture to try and detect any injuries that the man may have gotten.

“No, I didn’t,” Dream sighs, “as I said, the Flower helped.”

“Oh-kay then. What are your other plans with this place?” Ranboo places a fencepost and ties the two leads onto it as he steps forward and looks around the renovated base, specifically the unactivated portals. “I’m sure we can help with them.”

“Well...” Before Dream can fully answer, Charlie pops up from the one active portal that’s by the very left side of the main room. “The training room is done, World!”

“Training room?” Tommy looks at the slime person then glances back at Dream. “Why would we need a training room?”

“...I remember that one of the conditions of our deal was that I’d train you.” That causes any retort Tommy may have had to die as he presses his mouth into a thin line. “Part of the deal was to also assist you in what you needed. I saw that you needed a better base and your skills can use more work if you’re serious about attacking the entire server yourselves.”

“Right,” Ranboo can see Tommy’s eyes gain a faraway look to them. Of course, it was Tommy who remembers that distant memory more vividly than Tubbo and the ender himself. Tommy was the one that pushed Dream into adding that to their deal if they somehow escaped their time loops, fearing that if things were back to normal again, and with normalcy comes permanence, then that would mean that Dream could go back to torment them.

It was to make sure that they had some sort of upper hand if that ever happened, and look where they are now; their roles have been switched.

“I’m glad that you remembered that,” Tommy mumbled, refusing to look in Dream’s direction and instead examining the large room.

“Of course,” Dream nonchalantly returned. “I agreed to the deal.”

And here they thought that they had him as one of them. They were too excited.

“I’m sorry for my absence in these past many loops.”

“We get it, Dream. Mental health is important. You deserve a break.”

Tommy loves reminiscing their past victories, but he absolutely despises remembering his actions of “immature anger” as he calls it.

They didn’t use the training room just yet, instead, they've raided everyone’s chests to give them more time to prepare and time to actually use the training room. During those raids, Dream and Charlie have been busy.

They did not think that Dream would go out of his way to make various different farms that they have no idea what to do with. Yeah, it’s cool to have a piglin farm for golden apples and an illager farm for totems of undying but this is just overkill at this point.

Or at least, that’s what they thought when Dream showed them that they can fling falling blocks and a shulker’s and ghast’s projectiles with a fishing rod. They knew that Dream was is capable of dangerous stuns but this? Now they’re glad that they essentially have an infinite supply of death-preventing items.

Normally, they’d use less dangerous blocks for training such as gravel or sand, but with the threat of practically the entire server after them, they had to skip a lot of steps and use anvils instead, plus it’s not like they’ll come across and shulker or a ghast while at war in the Overworld.

Ranboo lets out a huff as he watches the anvil fall two blocks away from the red and white target made on the ground. Not bad after ten or so attempts. Just above the platform where the anvil fell, he can see another platform where Tommy is hovering across the air in a boat. He lets out a yell of triumph at finally getting it right.

On a separate platform, Ranboo can see Tubbo getting his timing right when eating chorus fruits as they can teleport the person who eats them to the closest solid ground, potentially saving them from falling in lava, levitation, and fall damage and can be used as a form of evasion in combat. Tubbo drops down and fails to eat the fruit in time, instead of landing on a suspended platform lower than the one he stood, he instead got teleported to the very bottom of the training room. With a water elevator, Tubbo easily goes back up to his platform to try again.

As for Dream and Charlie, he’s nowhere to be seen ever since he told the others to get the hang of the things he demonstrated, promising to spar with them later when he’s done or when it’s time to take a break.

They would be lying if they said that they weren’t incredibly curious as to what Dream planned.

Time seemed to pass quickly when Dream and Charlie popped out of the portal to announce that it was time to rest and the tour that he promised. They didn’t even realize it’s almost midnight. The main room, which they’re calling the Flower room, has a makeshift table and five chairs made of the Flower’s vines in the center of the room that now has all Nether portals activated. On the table, plates and pots filled with desserts, meat, and stew emit a mouth-watering scent that made them realize that they’ve been eating bread and cold cooked steak all day, or all loop now that they’re thinking about it.

The teens, despite being technically really old now if the loops weren’t resetting their ages, acted like children as they ran out of the portal they were in and to a chair where they begin eating food that they didn’t realize they missed until now.

Tubbo kept turning back the pot filled with warm honey, the sweet and thick taste reminding him of times before wars in the original timeline. A time when he would help Niki make honey pastries in the summer and pour boiling maple tree sap onto cold snow on plates to make maple sugar, the bottles of honey and maple tree sap that were gathered by Dream as he lets out a wheeze for when Tubbo complains of his stomach aching after eating so much at once.

Ranboo has forgotten the majority of his memories, but with each spoonful of rabbit stew with petals of yellow and blue, a foggy moment in his life slowly floats up to the surface of his head. A time when he had purple eyes. Late nights of being idle and with nothing to do, with no one to seek comfort from. An obsidian box when a prisoner noticed his visitor being thinner than usual, stress visible in his stiff and proper posture as he enderwalked. With what little humanity he had left, he gave him a recipe, and soon, a little garden of dandelions and blue orchids with rabbits that frolicked through it was made. A comfort food that he grew to turn to when in times of great distress when he enderwalked.

Tommy held onto a single golden carrot in his hand, remembering a time before he broke the server’s rules just because he wanted to, that he thought that it was fun. He distantly remembers asking what a golden carrot tasted like, having never eaten one before at the time. He takes a bite out of the golden carrot and feels significantly less hungry, alongside a sense of serenity as a memory fades into his mind. He remembers feeling surprised at its effects, followed by wheezing that sounds very close to a kettle left boiling, the calm atmosphere further ruined by wheezing that went up in pitch and shrieks that demanded secrecy of the moment. He remembers that carrots, although not as filling, still held that sense of comfort in them and thus gave some to others as a form of comfort like how Ghostbur gave out blue, like how when Tommy gave the Ghostbur a carrot to calm himself.

Looking up, Tommy can see Tubbo and Ranboo enjoying themselves, trapped in their own heads as they relished every bite of their dinner. Dream is teaching Charlie table manners, starting with how to use a spoon and fork, trapped in their own bubble of companionship.

Tommy can remember the good moments before chaos struck, but he couldn’t remember them alone. Each good memory is paired with a bad one.

The others seemed to have let go, now finding peace in their fate of looping in time, potentially forever trapped in this server.

He accepted that they’re probably stuck here too, but why couldn’t he let go of his past actions? Why couldn’t he remember just the good times?

Why was it so hard to let go?

Dream from the original timeline was right. He was too attached to things that doesn’t - didn’t - shouldn’t - matter.

“I get that the furnaces are used for smelting the gold tools but why coal blocks? Wouldn’t nine pieces of coal be better?”

After their dinner, Dream began to show them what the base had to offer, starting with the gold farm in the Nether. Tommy and Tubbo are the ones that are inspecting everything while Ranboo asked Dream questions.

“A coal block lasts longer than nine coal, Ranboo.”

“But then how did you get so much coal to make stacks of them?”

“The tree farm that also serves as a source for apples.”

They’re learning some neat tricks and builds that Tubbo is 100% copying for future loops, which is good. Examples of what they learned are that FIre Aspect books can be substitutes for flint and steel, creepers that explode with potion effects leave behind a lingering effect of whatever potion they had, they can make the trades cheap in villagers by turning them into zombies and curing them, TNT in minecarts stacked together is enough to kill someone in full diamond and does more damage compared to end crystals, and many more.

They’re also learning how overprepared Dream is, and they’re on the fence on whether they should be surprised or not.

From wither farms (“I noticed that Tommy liked using Withers.”), to a sand duper (“Can’t risk going out with everyone after you.”), to even an entire building solely made to produce food located on an island in the middle of nowhere that’s only accessible through their Nether portals (“A variety of food is better for your health than eating one kind.”).

They severely underestimated Dream’s head and Tommy’s pretty sure that he can hear his iconic speedrunning music from just standing right next to him.

Now they’re finally in the last room that looks to be a laboratory. Stalactites over cauldrons in a row slowly drip lava on one side of the room while on the other, the pointed rocks drip water into cauldrons filled with potions ready to be bottled or be used for arrows.

“You guys have a renewable source of lava and potions, just don’t drain all of them and wait for the stalactites to refill them again and we’re good.” Dream then gestures for the double iron doors, “over there are chambers for whatever you want to use them for.” He then points to a chest in the middle of the room. “I put the Revival Book in there, plus ways to glitch out your pets so that they’d be immortal, with the potions needed for them.” He then waves a hand to gesture the entire room. “And there are spare brewing stands, bottles, and potion ingredients as the cauldrons are pretty slow to fill back up.”

Dream lets his arm drop as he lets out a yawn, “and that’s the end of the tour. Anything I missed?” He turns to the teens to find them frozen and flabbergasted. Charlie merely smiled along.

“Nope! I think that’s everything, World!” Charlie steps forward and grabs Dream by the shoulders to slowly push him to the portal. “Now go to bed. I’ll help with whatever else they need.”

“Okay, thank you, Charlie.” Dream slumps forward as he goes to the portal. Before taking the final step in, he turns back and says, “brew potions of harming with potions of poison! It’ll save you from using potions of healing!”

“Okay, World!”

And he’s through the portal, leaving the remaining occupants to really process everything that was shown and told of in their tour.

Ranboo is the first to break out of his stupor with a comment. “We really need to get Wilbur’s revival right this time.” The others numbly nod their head in agreement. “Charlie, did you leave Friend with Dream?”

“Yes, I did!” Charlie enthusiastically replied with a salute.

“Alright, then we leave them to bond while Tubbo readies a chamber.” Ranboo takes out his memory book and begins writing things down. Tommy makes a face as he stares at the book in annoyance.

“Y’know, these loops can somehow make it that every good thing we do ends with it blowing up in our faces. Why couldn’t it get rid of your memory issues?”

“That’s what I gave up questioning,” Ranboo places his book back into his inventory and begins looking through the chest that Dream left for them. “Hey, on the bright side, I don’t need it as often anymore.”

“Oh yeah,” Tubbo pipes up as he takes out lapis and gold from his inventory, “I’ve noticed that you’ve been getting better.”

“That’s good,” Tommy looks back at the portal. “...Do you think this’ll work? Wilbur isn’t exactly someone I'd see be good at caretaking.”

“You weren’t around when Ranboo and I were experimenting with revival,” Tubbo waves a dismissive hand at him. “It’s going to be fine.”

“Okay, if you say so, Tubs.”

Charlie and the Flower, the loopers find out shortly after, make a great team in watching people from afar while looking after Dream.

According to their slime spy, Friend seems to have forgotten about Ghostbur in favor of cheering Dream up, just as expected as cheering people up has always been his job. The next step on their checklist whilst ignoring any other concern of theirs that’s pretty much easily solved thanks to Dream’s over-preparedness is to get Friend into the chambers.

But before that, they have to actually get Friend and occupy Dream.

Charlie approaches Dream with a smile. “Hello, World!”

Dream looks up from having his face pressed against the blue sheep’s wool. “Oh, hello, Charlie. Do you need anything?”

“Yes, actually! Can I ask you questions about human anatomy again? I forgot which way bends where.” That wasn’t a lie by any means. All the loopers have seen Charlie twist and turn his body in ways the most talented contortionists can only ever dream of doing naturally, such as completely turning his head around to look behind him.

“Oh, sure.” Dream stands up, beginning to reach for the lead on the ground when Charlie stops him, “can Friend stay here? I think Tommy wanted a turn with him.”

“Oh,” is all Dream says as he hesitantly pulls his hand back from the lead. “Where are we practicing if we’re leaving him here?”

“To the Flower!” Charlie gently holds onto Dream’s hand and guides him to the bedroom corridor and to the portal that’ll lead them to the Flower room.

Once they both left, Tommy comes out of his room and sneaks into Dream’s to take Friend and follow after them, being as silent as possible. Charlie did a fantastic job at redirecting Dream’s attention as he crosses the giant room to go through the portal that leads to the laboratory.

Upon entering, he hears the sounds of splash potions being smashed with the howls of wolves crying out in pain coming from the chambers.

“C’mon, Friend.” He tugs on the frightened sheep’s lead as they go through the iron doors. In a chamber his right is Ranboo clutching on splash potions of healing as he eyes the withered wolves, waiting for the time when they’re right about to die to then heal them to bug them out into immortal war hounds.

It is a really good thing Dream made it so any deaths that happen in his base (yes, no matter what he says, it’s his base) are blocked because they’re losing wolves than they are gaining.

“Hey, Ranboo, where’s your husband?”

“In the main chamber down the corridor,” Ranboo’s voice is muffled behind the barrier, eyes focused on his task. Tommy decides not to bother him anymore and focuses on his own task.

After passing other empty chambers (with the exception of one being filled with the bodies of phantoms, feathers, and gears), he finally reaches the end of the hall and goes through another pair of iron doors to find a ritual circle drawn on the floor with lapis and melted gold, Tubbo standing over it off to the side with his hands on his hips and a proud smile. He turns to Tommy and his eyes light up upon seeing Friend with him.

“Good! We’re ready, now go get Ghostbur.”

Tommy nods and hands him the lead before leaving to go to another chamber that’s been transformed into a temporary bedroom that’s housing their ghost that they’ve done nothing but feed lies to, just to make things on them.

Tommy comes walking back in with a chatty and slightly worried Ghostbur, the ghost loudly gasping at seeing his beloved sheep (Tommy swears that he’s in a relationship with him, and he wouldn’t be so surprised if he’s right. The guy somehow got railed by a fish from what he was told, although this is from Cat Maid HBomb so he’s not entirely sure if it’s true).

“Friend!” Ghostbur rushes over to embrace his wooly (girl)friend. “I missed you so much! What are you doing in the middle of…” Ghostbur stares at the ground, trying to figure out what the markings are before looking up to reveal his confused smile. “Uh, what is this, Tubbo?”

“My art,” Tubbo easily lies and Ghostbur, none the wiser, takes it and turns back his therapy sheep. “What are you doing in the middle of Tubbo’s drawings?”

They stared into each other's eyes as if they were somehow capable of telepathic communication. Friend lets out a “baa”, producing a giggle from Ghostbur as he hugs Friend once more. “Good boy.”

While they’re having their little reunion, Tommy and Tubbo quickly get to work, as quietly as possible to keep Ghostbur distracted with Friend.

‘Don't worry, Ghostbur.’ Tommy glances up at the pair with an unfriendly smile. ‘You won’t be as useless anymore.’

“So the wrist goes around?” Charlie has his eyes trained on Dream’s wrist as he moves it around, careful so as to not cause him any pain or discomfort.

“Yes, Charlie.” They’re currently sitting on a large vine that the Flower raised for them. “And necks don’t.”

The vines around them begin to twitch as the Flower moves to tilt itself towards the direction of a portal being used. All Dream and Charlie saw was a blurry figure moving towards them before it was quickly entangled by vines, holding them upsidedown for them to see.

They saw...Wilbur with sheep horns?

Tommy and Tubbo tumble out of the portal and come to a halt when they see that the Flower took care of him. “Oh, thanks” The Flower bounces once in reply to Tommy’s small show of gratitude. “Now drop him. He’s not dangerous,” and the Flower did. Wilbur landed on the floor with a thud and an “oof”.

Dream stares wide-eyed at the newly revived man. Wilbur wasn’t supposed to have any hybrid features! What did they do?

Wilbur gets up and straightens his yellow sweater before looking up at Dream with a big and innocent smile, nothing like the ones Wilbur gives him in previous loops. “Hello, Dream. I’m Wilfred.”

‘Wilfred?’ Dream looks at the teens behind him and sees traces of blue on Tubbo’s hands. Right, he’s done more experiments with revival than him, but why make Wilbur this? He looks too soft and naive-looking to be on a battlefield, too similar to Ghostbur. Maybe this is a manipulation tactic to get Phil?

Dream jumps when Tommy loudly claps a hand on Wilfred’s shoulder, the sheep-hybrid practically vibrating with energy like a child impatiently waiting to be given candy for his good behavior.

“This dude is your caretaker, Big D!” Tommy announces, and Dream looks between him and Wilfred. He opens his mouth to speak- “And no, don’t think we didn’t notice your lack of self-care. You’re nearly as bad as Wilbur after he was revived.” Dream clicks his mouth shut at Tommy’s truthful remark.

Charlie leaves his spot on the vine he sits on to let Wilfred step forward and sit next to Dream, immediately and slowly wrapping his arms around him and lightly bumping his head against his. “Thank you so much for reviving me.”

Dream is about to speak again and Tubbo cuts him off, “he’s really self-deprecating so he’ll probably say that we did all the work.” Dream can only give Tubbo an unsure expression, and Tubbo gives him a nod of reassurance.

“Well, would you look at the time!” Charlie cuts in while looking at a little clock that's suspended in his wrist. “It’s time for lunch! You stay and get to know each other, we’ll take care of everything!” And just like that, Charlie, Tommy, and Tubbo leave into a portal with a sign that reads “Food Land”.

Dream turns back at Wilfred and lets out a tired sigh, one that Wilfred interpreted as him being tired. “Where’s your bedroom, Dream? You look exhausted! Have you been sleeping right?”

He can risk ruining their plans and potentially upsetting them for not following the deal, so he plays along.

He might not be forgiven the second time he severely messes up.

It has been days and yet, there are no signs of the people that have been labeled as traitors for aiding in Dream’s escape. Although, a discussion made on the same day they escaped the Red Banquet had a point that the others were commanding Dream rather than the other way around, which is strange.

Then there’s the Egg’s transformation into the Flower.

With a similar yet completely different threat, the server is now on the lookout for green vines and the Flower’s members.

Those under the control of the Egg have lost a canon life as they were unconscious when the ceiling collapsed. Since then, they don’t seem to be under any influence, which is good new.

The sounds of a trident with the Riptide enchantment being used rings from across the field Sam is standing in and he sees Tommy going straight for him. Sam barely manages to block the strike and instead is forced off his feet, surprised by the unexpectedly fast switch of a trident to a sword. Tommy stands over him with a smirk, “hey, Sam. Long time no see.”

Sam quickly gets up and puts distance between them. “Tommy, what are you doing? Why did you break him out of prison?”

Tommy rolls his eyes as he switches his sword with an axe mid-swing, now resting it on his shoulder. “Because I don’t have much to do on this server anymore.”

Despite him standing in a relaxed state, tension does not leave Sam as he eyes him down. “What do you mean by that?”

“It means what it means, dumbshit.” Tommy swings his axe around, watching its enchantments glimmer. “I got nothing left to do ever since Dream was sent to prison,” he nonchalantly meets Sam’s glare. “And after a bit of soul-searching, we thought we might as well tag Dream along, mainly for his high IQ.” That’s not actually the main reason, however, non-loopers didn’t need to know that. “Can’t let that go to waste when the Flower can use it.”

‘The Flower? Is it similar to the Egg?’ Sam wanted to question but was caught off-guard when Tommy suddenly charged at him. The teen successfully disables Sam’s shield and quickly switches back to a sword, relentlessly swinging at him and pushing forward.

Unexpectedly, glass is then smashed over his head and Sam feels his knees buckling, unable to carry his weight with heavy armor. His vision begins to sway, causing more difficulty in keeping himself standing upright. How potent is this potion effect?

“Not feeling so good, huh, Sam?” Tommy taunts as he kicks him to the ground. “The Flower’s petals are really potent, and it could be more deadly with your help.”

“I- I’ll-” a painful-sounding cough breaks out from Sam’s throat, “never join you.”

“I wasn’t asking.” The familiar sounds of pearls shattering nearby cause Sam to open his eyes (when did he close them?) to look in the direction of the noise, hoping that it would be someone that can help him. Instead, he sees Ranboo and Tubbo. The newly arrived pair grabs him by his arms and drags him along, Tommy following after him while keeping an eye out.

A funnel-like flower, one that looks identical to the Flower that replaced the Egg, albeit smaller, awaits them. It allows the loopers and their captive in its petals before borrowing underground to travel back to base.

“What are you going to do to me?” Sam manages to wheeze out, his chest feeling tighter. “They’ll come looking for me.”

“They’ve been looking for us for days, Sam. They won’t find you until we want them to.” Tommy pulls out a blindfold and ties it around Sam’s eyes. Can’t have him looking for escape routes or give the others a description of what their base looks like. “What we’re going to do? Well, the Flower requires sustenance in the form canon lives to make its poison more potent.” A finger is shoved into Sam’s chest. “What you’re feeling right now is its weakest.”

‘Weakest?!’ Sam mentally screams, how can something painful that competes with the wither effect be weak? He fears what it may feel or do while under the effects of the Flower.

His darkened vision becomes brighter and he feels dragged again, to then be followed by a curse as he’s abruptly dropped and heavily lands on the cold floor. 

“Charlie, I thought I told you to hide Dream away before we got back with Sam!”

“I got distracted and forgot, Tommy fro-”

“What did we say about names?”

“Only call you by your names. Sorry, Ranboo.”

Sam, with what little strength he has, guides a shaky hand up to move his blindfold. Instead of looking around, his eyes are stuck on the sight of Dream, looking far better from his diet of potatoes, but panicked. The once-feared man tightly holds onto a curly-horned Wilbur. Little specks of blood slowly seep through the revived man’s sweater on the shoulder Dream’s head is on, yet Wilbur remains unbothered. Instead, one hand is behind Dream’s head, as if pulling him closer, whilst the other rubs his back. Wilbur slowly sways them as he hums.

The unusually disturbing sight distracts Sam from seeing a potion bottle being thrown in his way, and his vision is gone. He is pinned on the floor with more force than necessary and is tied up.

“Great, he saw the base. Now what?” Sam can hear Tommy’s scowl in his words.

“Firstly, Wilfred, can you get Dream back to his bedroom? Charlie will get the food for you.”

“Will do, thank you.”

“As for Sam,” the frustration in Tubbo’s authoritative tone as he says his name causes Sam to stiffen and tense up. “We broke the prison before he was tortured. We’ll have to move our focus to Quackity.”

“In that case,” Ranboo chimes in, “we go after Sapnap and Karl.”

“We can take it a step further and get Badboyhalo and George to get Sapnap,” suggests Tommy. “And with Badboyhalo, we can go after Skeppy. More prey and allies for us.”

“That’s a really good idea!” Tubbo snaps his fingers, presumably at Tommy. “We’re really starting to plan like Dream.”

“In what way?”

“We’re making a plan that’s getting more and more complicated.”

“Well, as he said-”

“Or as you understood.”

“Shut up, Tubbo- anyway, from what he said, the more complicated, the better the rewards. Now let’s get feed Sam to the flower. I’m pretty sure everyone will really start taking us seriously if they see the hallucination of Sam being on our side.”

“What are you doing?”

Wilfred whirls around to find Null dangerously close to him. He swings his fist at him and missed, much to his annoyance, when Null calmly stepped back and moves his head to the side.

“Reading what inspired my creation, what do you think?”

“Comparing yourself to your counterpart.” It’s not a guess, it’s a statement, and Null didn’t need the sheep hybrid to tell him that he was right. “Master Dream will be very upset upon hearing that you looked through the books in the Conform & Comfort era,” the other masters will be upset too, however, Null knows that Wilfred cares very little about them. Wilfred’s ears fold back as he lets out a low growl at Q.

“If you tell me what your goal is then perhaps I may stay silent for now.”

“For now?”

“We both know that there are eyes everywhere. It is inevitable that they will know. It’s only a matter of time.” Again, Null is right, and Wilfred bites back any words he may later regret revealing.

The silence stretches out between them, neither backing down from the other as they continue to stare into each other’s eyes, one searching, the other glaring. Null fills the library’s silence with an audible hum of realization. “Does this have anything to do with Willow?”

The way Wilfred tenses once again confirms him right. “You are jealous, aren’t you?”

“Shut. Up.”

“Insecure, perhaps? Questioning why the others felt the need to make another clone of you for your master?”

Fact after fact after fact, all said in an irritatingly neutral and uncaring tone that made Wilfred haphazardly toss the book of his origins to the central table of the library in favor of charging at Null.

The Karl clone merely turns into black sludge and lets Wilfred crash into him. Manipulating his slime-like body, he restrains Wilfred from behind and pushes him against the wall with his arms firmly in his grip. Null waits for Wilfred to stop thrashing before he continues, “There is no need to feel inferior, Wilfred-”

“I do not-”

“-for Willow is there to provide to your master what you can’t and vice versa.”

“I can provide him with anything-”

“And having both you will certainly make him feel more at ease.” Null slowly loosens his grip. “You won’t have to worry about leaving him alone to fetch him whatever he desires. Willow will be there to assist him when you’re temporarily gone.”

Wilfred is still, having stopped his attempts of retaliation to instead listen. “He is your twin and equal, however, if you refuse to see him as such, see him as an accessory and canvas, an extra pair of hands to carry objects, and a slate for Dream to draw on.” Null solidifies his body back to a human’s and turns the other way where he knows a certain clone is located.

“Remember, this is for your master’s sake. I doubt you’d like to displease him further by creating a ruckus with Willow.” With those words, Null leaves Wilfred to the confines of his mind.

Wilfred hates to admit it, even in the privacy of his own mind, that Null is right.

Distant voices followed by the sounds of running can be heard, and it’s coming closer. Wilfred looks to his right and sees a face similar to himself. Instead of a head of brown hair with a white streak, it’s white with a brown streak. Tattoos color what little skin he sees from underneath the yellow sweater he wore over a brown collared shirt. Floral scents follow him as he steps closer, the shoulder bag that was once owned solely by Wilfred, now shared between them, firmly gripped in one arm to prevent it from bouncing too much. “Wilfred! There you are.”

Slowing to a stop, Willow doesn’t hesitate to reach for his arm and tugs with his too soft hands, as if Wilfred didn’t attempt to murder him hours ago. The tugs are weak, barely budging Wilfred from his spot as the sheep-hybrid really looks at Willow. Compared to WIlfred, Willow is just a weak and delicate flower. Yes, he can fight but overly relies on items rather than brute strength. ‘A Ghostbur to Wilfred,’ he once heard Ranboo during his meetings with the other masters.

“Dream’s in a bitey mood and he needs you! Hurry!” Wilfred is reminded yet again of how right Null is, his words echoing in his head. “Willow is there to provide to your master what you can’t and vice versa.” While Wilfred can stand Dream’s way of showing his love to him, Willow couldn’t, the same way as to how Willow can be oh-so gentle with him while Wilfred tends to struggle with it. They both need each other to properly care for Master Dream.

Looking into the frantic eyes of his clone, his colleague (and perhaps, one day, his brother), he says with a light tone of respect, “lead the way.” Willow seems taken aback, but it goes just as fast as it came and nods, running off with Wilfred close behind.

Null writes down everything that has transpired from above a bookshelf and immediately goes to tell Charlie.

It appears that Wilfred finally saw his own flaws and his counterpart’s strengths, and the relationship between Wilfred and Willow has improved with his intervention.

Tommy, Tubbo, Ranboo, and Charlie all congregate in the palace’s fancy equivalent to a living room with a giant screen mounted on the wall, watching other worlds that Magenta ever so kindly allowed them to view in a similar fashion to binge-watching episodes of multiple series. Their clone assistants are nowhere to be seen.

Currently, they are watching a universe created by an entity (that calls themselves an author), named Zakyuu and their universe, dream smp, but we coded it so that tons of other universes collide with ours.

"Tommy, I only have a couple of rules," Dream rubs the bridge of his nose, "--when you guys mess around! One of them is don't go in the prison!"

Tommy and Drista both trade sheepish looks before mulishly following the Admin out of the prison. "Seriously, you two," Dream says, a pinched expression on his face that makes Tommy feel a little guilty. "You know Sam and I spent a lot of time working on this. Designing it. If you'd broken one of the mechanisms..."

"Sorry..." Drista kicks the floor, shoving her hands in her hoodie pockets. She's clearly uncomfortable. "I just wanted to see what it was like."

Tommy doesn't say anything, but watches carefully as Dream wilts under her pitiful display. Even after all these months, Dream's still so easy.

Like don't get Tommy wrong, he does feel guilty that he caused the man near panic when he found out that they were breaking into the more...delicate areas of the prison, but that doesn't really change the fact that Dream was oddly really weak against the children of the server. A fact that EVERY minor took advantage of, because they were little shits.

“Ain’t that the truth,” Tubbo comments as he lightly elbows Tommy’s arm. Tommy lets out a snort and Ranboo makes a huff in amusement.

“Do you think maybe we’d be able to talk to others like us one day?” Charlie wonders aloud. The rest turn to the slime cube on the armrest of the couch at that.

Ranboo is the one to answer. “Eh, probably. If Magenta can make it so that we can watch these universes and talk to our audience,” he gestures to the screen (or perhaps at your monitor?). "Then there's a possibility that we can."

“Well let’s hope they’re not too into their god complex.” Tommy crossed his arms, remembering that one loop where they had a run-in with a Schlatt that has a weird thing for drugs and apples.

“Tommy, we technically have a god complex, or at least had one.”

“No, I don’t think we did,” Ranboo joins in on Tommy and Tubbo’s conversation. “Sure, we’ve played god but that’s not the same as having a god complex.”

“True!” Charlie hops up, splashing a bit of slime on the armrest when he landed.

They all fall back into silence as they watch this universe deal with the fact that other universes are - as the title says - colliding with their own.

Charlie, from the corner of his vision, sees dark tar rising up from the floor, forming Null who’s holding a book. Charlie quietly slithers over and takes the offered book and slides back to his spot on the couch. The others already knew what the book was about as they ask questions from time to time, eyes still stuck on the TV and paying no mind to Null appearing and leaving.

“It was a rough start, but Wilfred is learning to work with Willow for Dream’s sake.” A page of the book within Charlie’s body flips to the other side.

“Can’t we just make it so that Wilfred likes Willow than doing this?”

“Where’s the fun in that, Tommy?”

“Yeah, and besides,” Ranboo pats Tommy on the shoulder. “Relationships are way better built from the ground up than pre-built or rushed.” He gives Tommy a light squeeze to prevent his mind from wandering too deep into the past.

Tommy turns to meet Ranboo’s eyes, and the ender-hybrid smiles. “Don’t think too much about it. Let’s just watch this universe.”

Chapter Text

"You don't know that!"

"I could say the same to you!" Tommy snaps, making them both reel. "You don't KNOW our Dream. You don't know ME. Stop acting like you can control who I hang out with or what I do."

"I'm not trying to control--"

"Yes you are!" Tommy retorts, running a hand through his hair. "You're trying so hard to push this narrative of Dream being this horrible fucking person that you're so adamant on ME not being around him! Newsflash asshole, Dream is one of my favorite people on this goddamn server!"

"But he's hurt and manipulated --"

Tommy surges forward and snatches the rim of Warden's collar and very nearly slams him to the wall. "YOUR Dream manipulated, hurt, and abused people. It was YOUR Dream who blew up L'manburg to bedrock. It was YOUR Dream who you can't stand being out of the prison because you're so terrified of losing control of one of the most powerful people on the server." Tommy's chest is heaving, and his eyes burn hotter from the rage he feels bubbling inside. "Delusional you might be, but I'm not falling for your tricks, Sam. My Dream is MY friend. You don't get to take him away from me."

“Tommy,” upon hearing his name be called, he opens his eyes (when did he close them?) to look at Ranboo, eyes soft and worried. His eyes travel to the TV and find it paused, attention now on him. He glances back at Ranboo when he feels him squeeze his shoulder.

“Don’t force yourself to watch this,” Ranboo reassures. “We can fill you in on what you missed.”

Tommy wordlessly nods as he looks down at the red coat he’s wearing, the same red coat he wore in the Pandora’s Island loop where he pretended to be the next Wilbur in his time on Pogtopia. Little embellishments have been added to separate it from its origin, however, such as the Mount Datura flag patch on his shoulder.

Tubbo taps on Tommy’s shoulder from the other side of the couch. “Dream’s probably in his realm. I’m sure he won’t mind some company.”

“He already has two, though.” Tommy jokingly replies as he clutches his coat.

“Well then make it three.” Tubbo bites back as he pats Tommy on the back, pausing to push him forward in between the pats. “Go. You’ve been stewing in your own head way longer than Ranboo does, and that’s supposed to be his thing.”

Tommy lets out a faint laugh at Ranboo’s indignant huff, although he doesn’t say anything as it is true.

Convinced, Tommy gets up and leaves the room, not needing to call for Nook as he knows that he’s waiting for him on the other side of the door.

Nook, the ever obedient backpack, stands to attention upon seeing Tommy enter the hallway where the rest of the clone assistants wait for their respective masters. He lowers himself for Tommy to hop on his back.

“Where to, Tommy?”

“Twilight Fields.”

A wave of peace washes over Dream as he stares at the eternal sunset this realm has displayed in its sky. The cool colors of blues and purples dominate the warm oranges and pastel yellows as the sun hides behind the distant mountains.

Gentle winds weave through fields of color-shifting trumpet flowers, its current colors being various shades of light blue to show Dream’s contentment. Blue has been seen as a comforting color to Dream, and he wholeheartedly blames Ghostbur, his family, and the many versions of Revivebur that they created for him for making it so.

Dream closes his eyes and sinks back onto Wilfred’s chest, finding the fingers running through his hair soothing. Hushed voices converse with each other as he feels himself being nudged and adjusted to make him lay down, his head now on Wilfred’s lap.

“Dream?”

The man opens his eyes to see Tommy hugging his forearms with a neutral expression, and he already knew what he wanted. Making eye contact with Wilfred, he glances off to the distance where they can see the little silhouette of Willow walking around the flower fields with a basket in hand.

Wilfred understood the silent command and slowly left, walking away from under the lone tree’s shadow and down the hill to join his counterpart.

Dream glances back up at Tommy and opens his arms. Tommy wordlessly gets on the ground and huddles close to him, pulling him into a tight embrace as he practically smashes his face against the man’s shoulder. Dream embraces him as well, albeit far more gently, and hums a little song, the same song that Wilfred hummed when Dream had his first breakdown in front of him in the Mount Datura loop.

They lay there under the tree’s branches in comfortable silence. Letting Tommy sort through his thoughts before he spoke. “I don’t like it.”

“What don’t you like?”

“The past,” Tommy squeezes Dream, eyes shut once more. “The early loops. The server. The SMP-”

Dream gently hushes him as he runs his fingers through blond hair, his other hand rubbing at the centuries-old teen’s back. He understood why. He’s not blind to see that he wasn’t the only one hurt when the loops first began. He may be clever, being able to control people like puppets with strings tied to his fingertips, but he has no proper knowledge as to how to consult someone he deeply cares about. His past obsession with control and possessiveness for peace ruined that for him. The only things he can offer are reassurance, physical comfort, an ear for others to talk to, and attempts at helping that don’t always guarantee succession.

To think that the server’s major downward spiral to war and paranoia was first started by little minor problems that no one noticed.

An adult that was supposed to fight his own battles with fellow soldiers instead coerced underaged individuals to attend a man’s war.

An accident involving magic. A confusion between an exorcism and a separation spell.

A motive that stayed the same but a far different execution to achieve it as a result of said confusion.

Instability on the server caused by the same confusing accident, creating an error in a person’s code regarding the memory processing abilities.

All of which are witnessed by one person who couldn’t fully understand the situation, couldn’t see it as a situation to begin with, and was unable to help if they did.

A butterfly flies over the time-locked pair, its wings resembling the colors of a nebula. Dream eyes fly just within his grasp yet out of reach. He tightens his hold on Tommy, not daring to let him go for the sake of an insect that was more than that.

The nebula butterfly flutters in place as if beckoning him to take it, and all Dream does stare at it.

Tommy glances up at him when Dream squeezed him to borderline uncomfortable. He turned in the direction Dream is looking and saw it, and now it was his turn to hold onto Dream just as tightly, his gaze much more heated compared to Dream’s cold glare. He quickly hides his face in Dream’s chest, his hands bunching up his lime green hoodie, almost desperate. Dream tears its eyes from the offending insect to his beloved brother in everything but blood, resuming his physical efforts of comfort.

Sensing their master’s rage, the daturas shift from blue to red as they catch stray light from the unseen sun and spit out orange butterflies. The flower field very quickly creates a kaleidoscope of butterflies that swarms around the nebula-colored butterfly, and it does nothing as it lets itself be taken into the sea of tangerine wings, a silent promise of its return shared between Dream and itself.

The hated butterfly falls to the ground, its multi-colored wings reduced into a dark shade of gray. Dream watches what remained of the butterfly be turned into dust, not to be seen for a long while. The marigold clouds of butterflies begin to glow a brilliant yellow before dispersing, the majority of it turning into a flurry of light disappearing up into the purple sky, the minority turning into little flickering insects that resemble the embers of a comforting flame.

Dream nudges Tommy, and he looks up, awe shining in his eyes at the sight of buzzing fireflies.

The sounds of grass being disturbed makes the pair look off to the side and see Willow smiling warmly at them. “Picnic's ready.”

Dream slowly gets up with Tommy cradled in his arms, neither wanting to let go. Tommy silently thanks Dream for letting him cling to him a little longer by laying his head on his shoulder.

Everything’s going to be alright.

Chapter Text

When you are powerful, you may not worry much with time.

When you are weak, you stress greatly with it.

No matter which stage in life you are in, time is always present.

A silent witness to all your success and failures, an old observer in one’s struggles and triumphs.

Everything revolves around it, it seems. An ruler of all, a wild yet intelligent beast that cannot be tamed.

It is patient and collected, even when under the supposed control of a god or a multitude of entities, nothing is truly controlling it. Time is merely playing a long and complex game that no high being can comprehend fully understand.

The Butterfly Effect, some have used to call it. They’ve tried playing that game before, and foolishly thought they were somehow winning against an opponent who’s been playing it for far longer than he has.

Ironic as Time is often seen as a spider rather than a butterfly, one of stealth. Nobody has known to have realized that they were caught in its web before it was too late.

The sole witness of this timeline’s beginning and end is one such victim who has made countless attempts at playing Time’s game, only to be at the mercy of a creation forged by Time’s rage in their act of treason.

What was birthed was an entity that looked deceptively human and friendly in appearance, standing before the crumbling paradise-turned-warzone in his purple hoodie as he gazes down at the Inbetween Guardians, complex designs of embroidery glowing a brilliant magenta, similar to their creator’s human half, Dream, and nothing like the one their charge wore, Karl.

Crossing over their eyes is a dirty yellow bandage, a memory and mockery of their creator’s brilliant duel halos, Exdee.

They felt what it was like to be above everything as it commanded their colleagues to trap their charges, manipulating the many instances of Karl as it tampered with mortal life first in curiosity, then for selfish enjoyment.

They started small but then became larger.

They can remember three of their crimes that made a large impact in this timeline.

The first victim of sporadic and gradual change was a dearly loved father and charming leader named Wilbur Soot, a man who merely wanted a home for his family and was willing to work with the Admin for it. A man who they guided into possessive madness as he blew up his nation when he saw that it was no longer his.

He was supposed to be something greater, the last Inbetween Guardian what was supposed to be a timeless paradise idly thought.

A switch between a made-up spell meant to expel dreamons from the body and a ritual that separated their God from their mortal flesh. The immortality half without the mortal other, one ignorant to morals and concepts made by humanity, the other becoming cold without his immortal sun, now just a merciless void with a strong desire for power in the hopes of filling what he felt is missing.

The Admin was supposed to keep peace and order, the singular traitor left standing vaguely remembered.

And he did, but his execution was inhumane, destructive, wrong. Never once using his Admin powers because he can’t, taken away with his immortal half, the half that lost his sense of time and understanding of human concepts, the knowledge stripped from him with his mortal half. The server always reflected its Admin. When its Admin was torn apart, so did the server, and to an extent, the server’s inhabitants.

Inhabitants, which includes those outside of time, the Overseer of the Inbetween realized too late.

The frail form of a demi-god in blue tattered robes stares out into the dark void around them. A long time ago, they would have thought that immortality was a gift, now he has learned that it is only a good thing if things changed and if there was something to do. They had grown to envy the Angel of Death at some point, now they grew grateful. The man who created and subsequently destroyed his own flesh and blood along with his grandson deserved rest more than them. They were the reason why such an event happened to begin with.

In their own stages of grief, they grew to deny everything and blamed everyone but themselves. Now, with loneliness and their own thoughts as their only companions, they grew to understand that at the end of it all, at the end of time, and at the end of this timeline, they were to blame, and this is their punishment. Stuck in place with a dying universe, to then be plunged into the darkness, never to be shown the light and to be left forgotten, the same fate that the mortal half had to endure. Dream, they believe his name was.

They can forget every existence, every closely-guarded secret, every common knowledge, however, they will never forget the people who became one entity by the name of Lucid. They think that it was only fair to remember the people they’ve used and hurt the most.

And after all this time, they remain to be selfish, it seems. They wish for death, be it long and painful with a scream, or short and quiet with a whimper, they desire their existence to end. But that too is a luxury they already know they didn’t deserve, so he bid one of his companions farewell, and stopped thinking.

Now It is just loneliness and the former Overseer of the Inbetween.

They make no acknowledgment to the ground that holds them decreasing in mass, disappearing into the void below.

Another part of this dying timeline, torn away to be remade.

Lucid observes the torn page of Timeline 0, the words and sentences fading away as if ink never touched its surface. The old and dusty book has only very few pages left, and as much as he desires to destroy it, he doesn’t. Not yet at least. It could be because he wishes to have a memento of his creation, a place he was made. It could be because a part of him wants to keep it alive for the sake of observing his dear time-locked prisoner in misery for his own sadistic pleasure.

“Or perhaps…”

Gaze traveling to the clean books on his shelf: Yearning for a Dream, Twisting the Loops, Happily(?) Ever After, The Dream SMP... He begins to ponder.

Eyes trained in the book with the most pages; Twisting the Loops.

He thinks with a light hum, the sound traveling throughout his library until it is silent once more.

They have created so much in Interlude.

Clones that are almost people, portals that lead to worlds that they may have experienced themselves or simply wish existed, the complete renovation of Inbetween.

Perhaps...

...

..

.

No.

The book that held the first timeline of his own creation; Yearning for a Dream.

A pest that he didn’t crush had managed to escape and is now a mortal, trying to regain the power that they stole. An Inbetween Guardian that had managed to escape and hide long enough to intrude in that timeline and brought with it others from TImeline 0.

On one hand, those from Timeline 0 may be able to fix whatever trouble that rogue Guardian may create, and on the other, the timeline now is most certainly a wild card that he cannot change as it has proven itself to be stubborn, the possibility of both predicted and unpredicted consequences too high for him to freely control now that the timeline itself realized that there are those with memories not from its own time.

He then looks at the book containing little pages, written in it is the least developed timeline; Happily(?) Ever After.

Certainly an unexpected timeline with the Egg and Exdee taking care of the newly released Dream.

.....

....

...

..

.

Alright. One more chance. After Timeline 0 is nothing but a memory, completely torn apart and repurposed for the other timelines, the traitorous demi-god may be given another chance in existence.

Despite holding grudges, he always had a soft spot for second chances. He suspects that it has something to do with whatever is left of Karl inside of him.

Who knows. Maybe they’ll choose people instead of sides like Ranboo from Twisting the Loops.

Speaking of Ranboo, Lucid wonders if he’s going to choose a side instead of people in Yearning for a Dream. Who knew being a former time traveler can be a perk in and of itself?

Chapter Text

Hey guys, author here.

Welp, this is the first actual author's note after... 23 chapters.

I'm sorry that I haven't updated in a long while. I just don't have as much motivation to write this story despite having a lot of ideas for them. Will I be back? I don't know, sadly.

But, if you're still interested in the characters (more specifically the loopers and their clones), you can come here to ask them questions and such.

Until then, I'll write to you villainous loopers next time.

~The Author