Archive of Our Own

Portaltrap, crystal PVP, player data, code attack, chunkban. Steam engine, totem pop, server crash, lag machine, dragon egg, item duper.

Everywhere has its own dialect. Some of it’s old, some of it’s new. Certainly he’s learned more Spanish arriving on this island than he ever thought he would.

It doesn’t take Fit long after being stranded here to figure out that he’s surrounded by amnesiac hooligans who are sweet as pie and have a real disregard for their own wellbeing. The wildest part is that they’re honest-to-god, by-and-large, nice. The kind of folks Fit might team with, if they had their shit together.

Some of them might be diamonds in the tuff. It's hard to say. In the first days, there’s a lot of chaos and it’s hard to get a good read on anyone. He means to do it, once he’s settled, but he gets distracted, because -

Well, the actual children show up. And Fit – well, what happens in the imaginary eyes of past-Fit is that current-Fit loses his goddamn mind.

The thing is. The thing is, the thing is, the thing is. The absolute scariest thing Fit has seen on this island and maybe ever was a couple days after Ramón’s first death. Even before this, Fit was busting his ass trying to keep this kid alive, thank you, no thanks to some sharp-toothed bastard in a goddamn Steve outfit who was supposed to help and fucked off immediately. Fit was not impressed with the local shadowy government’s practice of handing out literal children as a buy-in step. He was going to have words with his handler for not warning him (some day). At least reptiles grow up quick, right?

Wait, is that even true?

Right, so it’s two days after Ramón died, not markedly any more grown in the four days he’s been in Fit’s custody. And Fit’s been feeling pretty bad for this kid. He's gone out and ground dungeons and all sorts of reckless shit to buy him life. He’s home at night and not quite at his bed bunker yet, and Ramón is wrapped up in his blankets, in his bed across the room. Ramón who's normally such a good sleeper starts having a serious fucking nightmare. We’re talking screaming, thrashing, the sort of shit that gives you pause if it’s a grown adult doing it. But Ramón’s just a little kid.

So Fit walks across the room and calls his name and he doesn’t wake up. Shit, Fit’s thinking now, he doesn’t know what to do. He sits down on his kid’s bedside and squeezes his hand, shakes him a little, hey, hey Ramón, hey, it’s alright, uh, esta bien, esta bien, wake up, come on.

Ramón wakes up and does what any baby would probably do naturally – not like Fit would know! – and clings to him. Throws himself at Fit and sobs and buries his wet little dragon face in Fit’s shirt. Fit hugs him, surprised. Tries to use his good arm, mostly, since the metal one kinda runs cold. Sort of pats his back? He does not know what to do. This isn’t something he’s done. Fit M. C. does not console crybabies. Literal crying babies are different, apparently.

And it’s working. Smart little Ramón’s hiccuping tears are slowing. He wipes his eyes on Fit’s shirt.

“I’m here,” Fit tells him. “I’m here, Ramón, I’m here. I’ll always be here, okay?”

He talks low and slow as an old mule walking, because he is good at that kind of thing. Adult in the room. Late-night radio host. Calm.

But in the privacy of his own head, seeing perfect little Ramón listen to him, he is every inch the man who has stared into the missing-reality-pink angles of end crystals the tick before they blow. The man who’s talked his way out of portaltraps and suffocated in lag thick as gravel. He is thinking, oh fuck. Oh shit. Oh holy mother of god. Oh fuck.

Take it from a man who knows how to lose: Fit is fucking done for.

Philza Minecraft is an elegant old crow with wings like a broken elytra curse-of-binding’d to his back. (Not that Fit would say it out loud like that, of course. That'd be a dick move. Even for him.) Phil had caught Fit’s attention on the day of arrival because he was not a literal child and was acting like he valued his life. Then he’d lost Fit’s attention, briefly, because they both kept to themselves and kept their nose out of people’s business and there was a lot of shit going on. Well, fair enough.

You can make these things work, though. Phil is quiet, snappy, prudent. Pretty quickly, Fit decides that Phil might try and kill him, but that in the mean time, he’d rather hang out with Phil than with some of these loudmouths. And Fit is on vacation, after all. As the days turn to weeks turn to months, somehow out of that…

Well, the two of them establish a certain rapport. Let’s just say Phil never tried to kill him.

When he visits him, Fit appreciates the vantage point from the wall. Philza’s wall, he thinks of it as, although Philza didn’t build the wall. He just changed it. When they got here, this wall split the island, and if the Federation to be believed – if you were a fucking idiot – then the fracture laid into it is what doomed them all here.

It’s a simple and shitty story. Fit knows better. But someone built this giant fucking thing. It’s not a lavacast, although Fit knows better than to draw too much of a difference – it’s huge and maximally intrusive and is a symptom of some sicko or sick collective trying to establish dominance by restricting motion and heaving up a giant eyesore.

And then on Day 1, Phil’s grown son built a house partway up it, and some point not longer after Phil and his government-assigned husband scaled it and built a house for their new young son, above and within it. The top of the wall, is lined as far as the eye can see with potato plants. Food free for the digging. That’s some shit from the better side of 2b2t. Warms Fit’s goddamn heart, if he’s honest.

Not that anyone goes hungry around here anyhow, come to think of it.

Fit had bailed on Philza this morning. Actually, Phil had bailed on Fit. Probably one of them was in the wrong somehow. In Phil’s defense, he’d told Fit that he didn’t have much time before Chayanne woke up and that he’d need to catch the little guy when he could to get him to do his tasks, and Fit had agreed anyhow. They’d gone to a quiet little sub-level and had themselves a very nice time.

Afterwards, as Phil shrugged on his shirt, he’d seen the communicator message and gone aw, fuck, my kid’s here so I gotta go. You can stay here long as you like. Or just bounce, whatever. Uh, I got water in the chest - and Fit who had a backpack sitting in plain view by the bed magically stocked with twenty five gallons of pure river water, chuckled at Phil’s rushed thoughtfulness and said Phil, you’re too good to me. He’d wondered what might happen if he waited for Phil to come back, but after a while he got antsy, so yeah, he bailed.

In the evening he gets a text.

Philza whispered to you: > o/

Philza whispered to you: > dunno how long you stayed

Philza whispered to you: > but I moved the bed in case you set yoru spawn and didn’t mean to

Philza whispered to you: > might want to reset

Philza whispered to you: > just remembered oop

On one hand, hah. Fit had absolutely not reset his spawn, because hadn’t fallen asleep, because he wasn’t an idiot.

What he had done is lounged on Phil’s bed for an hour or so, warm and post-coital and, honestly, sappy as it sounds, just appreciating Phil’s lingering smell not to mention his double-thick reinforced walls - before he finally got up and got dressed and hauled ass back home. But he hadn’t gone to sleep. Christ, he’s not the smartest guy, but he’s been around the block, okay?

On the other hand, he’s surprised by the message. Fit has barely mentioned his thing about respawning to Philza. ...And the point is academic because Fit hasn’t died once, thank you very much – but like, Fit’s not playing hardcore, it’s plainly a matter of time until he does beef it. So yeah, he thinks about spawntrapping every time he goes to sleep. It makes sense, okay? Listen, if you’d seen – well. Fit just doesn’t expect anyone else to think about it.

Philza Minecraft, ladies and gentlemen. He’s full of surprises.

Fit whispers to Philza: > All good

Fit whispers to Philza: > Thanks man ;*

Philza whispered to you: > wat

Fit whispers to Philza: > It’s a kissing face

Fit whispers to Philza: > It’s a little kissy face, Phil.

Philza whispered to you: > OH

Philza whispered to you: > lmao

Philza whispered to you: > nice o7

Heh. Nice.

Trust is a shark. Hear him out on this one.

Fit has never seen a real shark before coming to Quesadilla Island. He is damn sure about that. 2b2t is not so much on wildlife in general, at least the kind of hellholes Fit goes, and they definitely don’t have fucking sharks.

Which is to say, trust is big, scary, or so he’s been told – but it’s all secondhand, it’s something he’s heard of, knew some facts about. All his knowledge before now was basically cryptozoological. He’s never had to, like, believe in trust before, not all the way, not the kind where you can't walk away if it turns out they were trolling or you're not holding autoaimers to each other's throats. It wasn't accounted for in his sense of the world. Not until he landed in this cursed fucking island and swam out to sea and realized he wasn’t alone out there.

Now, though, christ, it’s fucking shark week every week. He trusts Ramón with a lot. He trusts Phil with a lot. He doesn't have to, he just does. It’s instinct, now. When he smells blood, he thinks about them.

It’s so fucking weird, man. Like, you have all this shit about them and you’re also just friends. You hang out. You talk. You’re allies. You hear about the stuff they like.

For instance, Phil likes to keep up with the meta, like it’s newspaper stock reports and he’s a 55-year-old banker. Phil’s trusted journalist is a wrathful cucumber prone to both depressive rumination and intense excitability. Fit doesn’t know Etoiles as well as Phil does, but honestly, he knows him well enough that if Phil trusts him, Fit will go ahead and give him the rest of the trust on credit. As far as gear goes.

It’s not crazy, he’s thought it through. Fit knows know-it-all tryhards from the old country and Etoiles has the hallmarks: Weird energy. Weird amount of energy (speaking of sharks, never not moving). Always wants to tell you what he knows.

Not that Fit’s complaining, mind you. He loves to learn. Especially when it’ll keep him and Ramón safer.

The latest meta, Fit learns, is a certain shield made from hammerhead shark teeth. Word on the street is that it’s OP, that it’s cracked. So. Fit goes out and grinds shark teeth. He starts out figuring one finds them in shark skulls, so he swims out to a lagoon and starts swinging.

Surprise of fucking surprises, who saw this one coming – a shark bites him.

But it turns out that the few teeth that fall out of that are just as good, and the shark is happy to keep going. I mean - you’d be crazy not to work with that, right?

Fit knew a gal in the Old Country who did a stint as a human sacrifice. Her guild got a nametagged zombie with a named sword in the room by her bed, and every time it killed her, the chat would announce: Great kits for cheap! Reach out! She spent a month straight in a death loop. Said the pay was great. The kits really were that good.

She never did it a second time, though. Fit wasn’t tempted, personally. But he’d never forgotten her or the human-powered farm. He gathers some rotten flesh for chum, plenty of hearty food, and enough XP to repair his armor. Then he swims out to the ocean, and starts punching sharks.

It sounds worse than it is. Honestly, it doesn’t suck that much. Fit’s done worse for less. Stay calm and keep eating to keep your health up. Keep a golden apple in your pocket and a trident and sword onhand for emergencies. If you see a whale, bail. Don’t be an idiot and you won’t die.

In a few hours, his inventory is bristling with razor-sharp teeth, top-tier from the tiburón’s trap.

Phil and Etoiles laugh at his story, amazed. Apparently they both spent days out at sea finding and butchering hammerhead sharks by the dozen.

“What do you mean,” says Phil, cackling, “you just let them bite you?”

“Yeah!” says Fit. “Yeah, it’s the easiest thing in the world! What were you doing?”

“Phil, we wasted so much time!” Etoiles moans. “Phil, we are dumb!”

“My helmet still smells like fish,” Phil adds.

“Maaaaaaaaan.”

Fit laughs. He doesn’t think they’re dumb. They just missed a step. After all, they weren’t dumb enough to get bit in the first place. Although, it is kind of nice to hear the scariest person on the server call you a genius and the best. Probably that’s why Etoiles does it – endearment.

It is working, though. Fit’s not above admitting that.

Ramón, his boy genius, his beautiful baby boy made in heaven by god himself, asks for stories sometimes from the Old Country. Well, shit. Fit’s got a million, no problem there. Ramón is a sharp kid. He likes machines and and animals. 2b2t doesn’t have zinc or sharks, and Fit tells him that, but he doesn’t harp on it. Ramón is dreaming, Fit knows, of a world beyond this one. Like any kid would. Somewhere he can have more lives and live larger. There are other places, better places, right?

There are, Fit tells him, confidently. There are, they’re out there, they really are.

Bros go on secret investigation missions together. You know how it is. There’s weird shit going on, on this island, all the goddamn time. Today, ElQuackity’s acting sus and he’s out in the wilderness, and he kidnapped a kid like last week, so it’s not overreacting to propose they go see what he's up to.

They don’t bring the eggs. Maybe that’s overreacting, given that last Fit heard ElQuackity could snap like a wet toothpick in combat and even asthmatic little Tallulah’s packing serious heat these days. That said, ElQuackity has Federation backing, there’s no reason to be dumb. Phil and Fit go it together, and sneak five thousand blocks away and into a boulderfield, hiding in crevasses and behind huge round rocks.

Quackity’s evil twin is fucking around in a village, looks like. They decide to stake him out from a nearby hill and just see if he gets up to any shit. He goes underground, pretty quickly, but he stays there and maybe he’ll surface, or maybe he’ll leave and they can go check it out after. As they get close, Phil stops him. They stand close, forehead to forehead almost, and Phil throws a splash potion of invisibility on the ground. Then they’re gone.

Their communicators have their locations disabled. They don’t want to startle the villagers either. Rather than rely on voices, clever Phil just puts a hand on Fit’s arm, lightly – “lead the way, king” when he startles reflexively, right, since they’re fucking invisible – okay. Sure. Fit takes them to the rocky slope.

The thing most people don’t get about a stealth mission well-done is that there is a lot of fucking time to kill. You know what the best way to get the drop on someone is? To already be perfectly stationed and hidden the whole time.

While they keep a lookout, Fit amuses himself by imagining Phil visible. The sweeping brim of his hat. Is there enough wind here to blow his hair? Probably not. In fact, it’s a little warm. Maybe Phil took off the, the outer coat, it has a fancy name Fit doesn’t know, whatever, and he’s lying on it. Maybe he opened up the shirt under it to get some airflow while he was fidgeting. The shirt below that (he has so many fucking shirts) is probably there – be reasonable – but it’s always tight enough to show off his chest pretty well.

Hey, it could happen. A guy can dream.

Speaking of fidgeting, the hand around his bicep hasn’t moved in a while. Phil’s as flighty as Fit is and there’s no way Fit isn’t going to tease the living hell out of him if he falls asleep on a stakeout.

“You still here?” he mutters.

The fingers on his arm jump, tighten and loosen. But they don’t let go. There’s a pause, and Phil’s voice is a little slow but very conscientiously soft, perfectly lucid. “Hm? Yeah, what.”

“Just checking.”

“Sorry. I zoned out.”

Fit snorts. The hand on his arm is still there, warm, two of the fingers on the shirt sleeve, two on the bare arm below, just as they have been for the last half hour. Reliable, that’s Phil’s middle name. “You hear, uh, sea otters sleep holding hands? So they don’t float away from each other.”

“I wasn’t asleep!”

“I know you weren’t. It’s the, the same kind of thing, though.”

“Hah - like if I get up and wander around and can’t find the rock I left you on? I’d just start yelling. ‘Hey, Fit! Fit, where are you?’” He whisper-calls into the air.

“Yeah, and you’d blow our stealth mission, Philza.”

“Oh, yeah, that.” Philza chuckles. “Yeah, suppose I would, huh. What else do you want me to do? A reaper’s gonna step on you.”

“Hmm,” says Fit, who’s wondering about the logistics of inching towards him so he can lean on his shoulder. Can’t be that hard. He’s right there. “You just keep doing what you’re doing, Phil.”

Phil snorts. The hand squeezes, relaxes again. “Yeah, okay.”

In his dreams, he keeps seeing one of those fucking crystals, the ones he’s only seen here in the Federation offices like a goddamn taunt from the admins and the devil himself. It’s missing-reality-pink, and its angles keep changing, and the floating runes are in a language he doesn’t need to learn. And it bobs in place like a fisherman’s lure.

In his dreams, he finds it in public places, hidden in his friend’s houses, in the corner of Ramón’s bedroom. His feelings on end crystals are not that complicated. When the Federation built a firework stand next to his house for the Fourth of July, he got about half his usual beauty sleep until he and Ramón stripped it down to command blocks. He doesn’t need another surprise explosion ever, thank you. Also, he wants a million of these crystalline fuckers. Probably if he has those, his family will be safe.

None of the dream-crystals are where he’d want to put them, of course. That’s how it is with fucking dreams. Instead his heart stops. He doesn’t reach for water or anything, in the dreams (though he likes to think that if it happened in waking life, he’d be smart about it.) No, he just watches, entranced, afraid.

Sometimes, in the dreams, they go off on their own. It wakes him up or kicks off one of those cascades of memories that mean he’d really rather be waking up. Sometimes he punches it. Either he thinks he sees another, and muscle memory kicks in, or the spirit just moves in him, and – boom. Fade to black.

But sometimes it just hangs there. He’d like to imagine that even asleep, he always carefully considers the situation and walks away from it, but that’s not true. Sometimes he dreams there’s someone else there and they’re about to pull theirs, and muscle memory kicks in. But sometimes he’s just standing in Phil’s house, in Federation offices, in the middle of goddamn gorgeous spawn. Sometimes, worst of all, it is even in the middle of Ramón's room right over his bed, and his perfect baby son is so clearly asleep there, fragile as – well – an egg. And even then sometimes he thinks, god damn, don’t you want to see how this goes?

And the spirit moves in him.

They're just dreams. Thank god. Albeit the worst of them. Those ones aren't common either, thank goodness.

More often, in the dreams, the crystals just bob there, indefinitely, folding over, folding over, slices of somewhere very far away, impossible to look away from. You can bring a dragon back to life with one of those, in the right place, in the right context.

He wakes up, every time, of course, in his bed bunker. As has been true for the last hundred-plus nights before, any end crystal explosions or lack thereof were hallucinations. They don’t have those here. They have other, weirder things here, but not those.

Still. Fit keeps an eye out waking too.