Chapter Text
- Potion Bullshit (Part 1)
Wemmbu’s head is swirling, his eyes feel like lead and his limbs are shaking, not from exhaustion, but from the combination of 4 energy drinks, two pitch black coffees and a few drops of 5 hour energy.
He feels like he’s standing on a precipice, the world swirls at its edges and colors dance on his tongue. But he keeps moving forward.
Just a little more.
***
Egg’s well used to Wemmbu disappearing into his workshop, well used to Wemmbu spending days within its obsidian-lined walls that hide the creaking of redstone and the bubbling of potions. He knows the routine, knows to leave simple sandwiches at Wemmbu’s door, because despite Wemmbu saying the food Egg makes is edible, Egg knows it isn’t.
Not when it smokes and hisses like a living dragon. Not when he made the sausage come to life.
So Egg is used to it. Used to spending the days Wemmbu hides himself in the workshop with books or Jaden. Egg sort of likes it actually, because Wemmbu is either draped over him, hovering over his shoulder or squirreled away in his workshop.
(Egg doesn’t acknowledge that it probably isn’t healthy. That they probably shouldn’t be all over each other all of the time. Every psychology book Egg’s ever read would list this as a textbook trauma-induced codependency and any psychologist worth their license would tell them they need to start separating.
Egg would sooner slice their neck open with a dagger than separate from Wemmbu. Wemmbu is his, and the possessive, yearning cavern within his chest digs its teeth in and refuses to let go).
But there’s a sort of dread in the air, the sudden, agonizing dread telling Egg that Wemmbu has either managed to do something so unhinged that the Aether will rip open the sky to stop him, or he’s about to make the server cower.
Egg could, probably should, stop him, but Wemmbu doesn’t often get to create, not when they loop back so Late, so Egg won’t.
Egg is a good best friend, and that means encouraging Wemmbu’s hobbies. Even if it’ll make Minute yell at him later.
Jaden yells at him first. Egg had forgotten that they hadn’t met Minute this loop. It was fine. So what if he missed his- Minute a little. They’d loop back to the End eventually.
***
Wemmbu scrambles out of his workshop, shoes slipping uselessly against the floor and embers crackling on his shoulders. Smoke drifted from the embers and three gleaming potions clenched in his hands. He can’t hide the mania burning in his eyes or the laughter bubbling in the back of his throat.
Egg looks confused when he runs into the living room, but Wemmbu doesn’t care.
“I did it!”
____
- Plushie Therapy
It’s a dumb idea, Wemmbu thinks, looking down at the soft, handknitted plushies that now rest in his lap, he’d just finished them, had spent loops completing them, loops where he’d pull them in and out of their strange secondary inventory so he could take them with him across timelines, but they were done.
Of course it had to be a LAW loop, but honestly, it was better than he’d get so-
So he stuffed them in a bundle and grabbed Egg so they could get to the stupid war meeting. He ignored how the bundle burned against his skin, like it was something shameful, but- but he liked them, and he’d made them, and they had a purpose, so he forced back the weight building in his throat.
It was fine.
***
It’s the meeting for the final battle, a plan being laid out and Parrot at the head, probably about to give some grand speech. Honestly Wemmbu’s forgotten the script by now (how long had they been looping? Years at least. A decade at most. Wemmbu ignored the lingering feeling that it had been longer. Hundreds of loops had slipped through his fingers. Blood covered his hands. Sometimes they tried to fix things, sometimes they let things play their course. It didn’t erase the blood though) and he didn’t care.
But everyone was distracted, so…
He threw them.
Theo squawked as a button-eye hit him square on the beak, the button making a loud clunk against the keratin. Spoke was knocked off his place on top of Mappic’s chair by a pitch black cat with a rainbow scarf. Minute’s hands curled around a small dragon.
Parrot nearly dropped his book, instinctively grabbing the plushie thrown at him. Flame had pulled a shield and blocked his, sending the blaze to the floor. Jaden’s trident was tipped over by a dolphin and Egg hissed as he caught the plushie between the pages of his journal. Mappic’s laughter was cut off by a dog hitting him in the mouth, he curled over himself, hand flying to his snaggletooth.
“What the fuck.”
“Wemmbu, what was that for?” Spoke yelled, popping up from where he’d fallen on the floor, his cat plush held above his head like the lion king.
“‘S what I was doing while Invis,” Wemmbu lies with a shrug. “Now they’re yours.”
Parrot gives the chubby parrot plush in his hands a squeeze, and looks at it like it’s something precious, but Wemmbu doesn’t really get why. Wemmbu ignores how Parrot looks sad as he holds the plush. Wemmbu didn’t really get it, but whatever.
Flame pokes his blaze with his sword and Wemmbu can’t help the hiss that slips between his lips. “That’s expensive yarn bastard! Don’t fuck it up!” Flame looks up at him at that, and there’s something edged with confusion-mania, like how Wemmbu gets on the bad days when ash-blood sinks deep into his tongue.
“Why?” Parrot asks, squeezing the plush again.
“Why’d I make them? Egg said I need hobbies. I like yarn.”
“No, why give them to us?”
“Hm? I don’t have a reason.” A sort of lie. Wemmbu had enchanted every plush, just in case. It had been a challenge, but Wemmbu had enjoyed doing it.
***
Lettuce and Parrot were talking, maybe establishing this was the final battle? Wemmbu didn’t really know, but what he did know was that Lettuce was sorta annoying and had definitely gotten on Wemmbu’s nerves this loop so~
Lettuce was nailed in the head with a very sad looking cat with a LAW emblem on its chest. He flailed, and fell to the ground, the cat stuck slightly in his helmet.
“WEMMBU!”
___
- Frog Hunt
Listen, there are very, very few things Jaden hates. The apathy caused by constant time-hopping and by going from destroyed pirates to the start of his civ has left Jaden blank when it comes to anything but Wemmbu and Egg. However, he hasn’t quite managed to shake his hatred of frogs.
They were great! He knew that. They offered new light sources, pretty ones that Wemmbu really liked and used in their home, but also, Jaden hated them.
It was the visceral, irrational hate that Jaden knew wasn’t quite worth it, but he still couldn’t shake it.
So, maybe a bit drunk and alone in his office in the middle of the beginning of his pirate civ, he makes the order.
(Jaden wasn’t expecting the chaos. Nor how his civ seemed more alive than ever. The leaderboard was a bit much though).
***
“Captain. Captain, wake up.” Something was lightly shaking him, and then a hand slammed against his desk. It shook, and Jaden flailed, and was greeted by a very, very pale faced pirate.
“Captain, Captain there’s a leaderboard.”
Jaden paused, blinked, and then blinked again. His mouth was dry and his head pounded lightly, like someone was knocking against a metal wall. “What?” He managed.
“Captain, there’s a leaderboard.” The pirate’s eyes are wide, like they’re traumatized.
“For what?”
“For dead frogs.”
“What.”
***
Eggchan was written at the top of the leaderboard, in elegant golden script it proclaimed him sitting at 178 frogs dead. Wemmbu was just below him, off by two points.
“How?” Jaden can’t help but ask.
“They’ve been at it. All morning.” The pirate sounds traumatized as she says it. “They bring back shulkers of frogs.”
“Where are the bodies?”
The pirate whimpers, sinking to the ground. “There’s a shrine.”
***
Jaden feels this may have gone a bit far. The shrine is large, made purely of green concrete and blackstone, and looks like a frog impaled by a dark sword. It’s also right by the entrance to the dolphin tunnel.
Wemmbu’s already there, three green shulkers laid in front of a very tired looking woman who sighs as she slowly pulls out frog corpses and counts them.
“208, 209, 210. Your new number is 210.” Jaden is just able to hear the woman say, and Wemmbu jumps, pumping his fist into the air.
“YES! Ahead by fifteen!” He cheers, and Jaden can’t help but wonder how Egg had gone from 178 to 195 in the ten minute walk to the shrine. Or how Wemmbu already knew.
“Wemmbu, what’s going on?”
“Jaden!” Wemmbu cheers and grabs onto his shoulder, he’s freer this loop, they’d worked together to make pirate civ this time, and Wemmbu hadn’t yet joined with Zam, and he looks all the better for it. “You sent out the order last night, so me and Egg have been hard at work!” There’s a smirk on Wemmbu’s face, the trouble-making one that Jaden recognizes from his potion experiments and redstone projects. The smirk that tells Jaden to nod his head and hope Wemmbu doesn’t drag him into testing it.
“Wemmbu? What order?”
“The frog hunt one? Hunt down all the frogs and make sure they no longer exist within the Great Sea?” Wemmbu looks confused.
“Wemmbu. I had no idea I made that order.”
There’s a pause.
“Does that mean we don’t get the bounty?”
“THERE’S A BOUNTY?!”
***
“Egg how the hell did you get 300 more frogs?!” Jaden hears Wemmbu yell, and Jaden’s head thumps against his desk. Silently, he weeps, because he knows he’ll have to deal with the treasurer at tomorrow’s meeting.